No, the New “Epstein Files” Don’t Prove Rowling Was a Friend of Epstein
A tour through the impressive leaps of logic behind this week’s Rowling–Epstein conspiracy theories.
It is Sunday, 8 February 2026, and for the past few days, virtual tongues across social media have been wagging over the U.S. Department of Justice’s latest tranche of documents relating to the life and sins of the world’s most infamous sex offender, the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Hitting the headlines of more established outlets are concrete revelations concerning such predictable Epstein pals as Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Meanwhile, on social media…
For certain activism-minded netizens, the newest batch of “Epstein files” provides irrefutable proof that J.K. Rowling was a friend of Epstein.
Naturally, it does no such thing. If anything, the material being circulated suggests the opposite – but why let the truth interrupt the internet’s favourite pastime: manufacturing juicy misinformation that edges uncomfortably close to defamation?
This article addresses several of the claims being pushed by conspiracy accounts. Some are trivially wrong; others require a little more patience and a slightly stronger stomach. What unites them all is the oldest tactic in the conspiracist playbook: say it loudly, because most people won’t read the source material anyway. I do not expect this piece to convert anyone who has built an identity around not reading, but I do hope it arms the truth-minded among us with the facts – and, perhaps, the occasional well-aimed eye-roll – when these claims inevitably surface again.
MYTH 1: J.K. Rowling invited Jeffrey Epstein to the Cursed Child premiere & after-party.
Iota Aurigae, over at the Rainy Season Times Substack has already put together a solid debunking of this myth, which you can read here:
To summarise Aurigae’s work for the benefit of those who don’t want to delve into the details:
The oft-shared PDF invitation to The Cursed Child’s New York premiere, the intermission supper, and the after-party was, on the available evidence, sent to entertainment publicist Peggy Siegal.
Producer Colin Callender told Deadline that Epstein was not on the original invite list.
Siegal appears to have called in a favour to secure additional seats for the dinner without flagging Epstein’s name to Callender directly. Epstein’s name was communicated to Callender’s assistant, Rhys Kimmitt, who handled ticketing logistics.
In a Monday follow-up email after the premiere, Siegal indicates that only one dinner ticket was supplied, that Epstein’s name was not on the guest list, and that he was turned away at the door.
In other words: Epstein was not originally invited; he attempted to obtain access through last-minute manoeuvring that did not involve Rowling’s team; and he was refused entry because his name was not on the list.
One additional point that is routinely mangled online: Rowling is credited as one of the three creators of the underlying story, but not as a producer of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child productions. That matters because it limits the plausibility of the wilder claims that she was personally “running the door”, “handling the guest list”, or otherwise exercising direct operational control over the event.
As part of my own investigation, I compiled a “cast of characters” involved in the communications around Epstein’s attempted attendance. This may seem superfluous, but conspiracy accounts are relying on readers not knowing who is who — and then casually implying that emails between Epstein’s, Siegal’s, and Callender’s teams must somehow be “Rowling’s team”.
Jeffrey Epstein - no introduction needed.
Lesley Groff - Epstein’s assistant.
Peggy Siegal - entertainment publicist; owner of the Peggy Siegal Company.
Rebecca Drescher - Employee at The Peggy Siegal Company.
Lila Walker - Employee at The Peggy Siegal Company.
Marisa Frank - Director of Operations at the Peggy Siegal Company.
Colin Callender - producer of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child; Founder/Chairman of Playhouse Productions.
Rhys Kimmitt - assistant to Colin Callender.
Ira Lesserson - Epstein’s driver.
Merwin Dela Cruz - staff at 9 East 71st Street (Jeffrey Epstein’s New York residence).
Jojo Fontanilla - staff at 9 East 71st Street.
Sonam Dema - staff at 9 East 71st Street.
Leo - staff at 9 East 71st Street.
For those who want to dig through the primary material themselves, you can consult a list of the files I have identified through searches of the U.S. Department of Justice document repository (“Epstein Library”) in the footnotes1. Or, for ease of use, you can download a compiled document of all those files here:
MYTH 2: J.K. Rowling was in direct contact with Jeffrey Epstein.
Some X users appear to believe that J.K. Rowling is apparently the only woman on Earth who could plausibly sign a message “Jx”.
A widely-shared graphic claims to “connect” tweets attributed to Rowling – signed “Jx” or “Jo x” – to an email thread between Epstein and a woman who signs her emails “Jx”.
This is not evidence. It is pattern-matching dressed up as investigation.
Firstly, “Jx” is not an identifying signature. It can be an initial plus a kiss, it can be an informal sign-off, it can be a shorthand nickname, it can be… almost anything. Treating it as a unique fingerprint is the sort of reasoning that makes horoscopes feel like forensic science.
Secondly, the language details matter. Rowling is British to her bones, in both voice and register. Even I, as a British child, only learned that we spell “jail” as “gaol” thanks to the Prisoner of Azkaban. To me, an email from her referring to an “airplane” rather than an “aeroplane” (or simply a “plane”) would warrant a call to the police to report a suspected abduction.
Context matters too: the idea that anyone would offer to pay for Rowling’s plane tickets as though money might be a problem is not merely implausible but is so implausible that it should provoke immediate suspicion in any reader whose brain is not running on power-saving mode.
Let’s be honest, this one is simply too outlandish to merit this many words to debunk it.
MYTH 3: J.K. Rowling has never condemned Epstein for his actions
This is a silly one, so I’ll make it quick. A selection of X users claim that J.K. Rowling has never condemned Jeffrey Epstein, and has never even mentioned him until she came out to deny the claims above.
Admittedly, a search for tweets from @jkrowling containing the word “Epstein” only throws up her tweet denying any connection to Jeffrey Epstein.
Naturally, once one looks past the enormous mountain made out of a mole hill, one sees that the simplest answer is always the most appropriate answer.
As we can see, J.K. Rowling has commented on Epstein’s abuses, but when she did, she decided to concentrate on the victims – as we all should – instead of the perpetrator. For any right-minded person, the condemnation of that man’s abuses goes without saying, and we would all do well to remember the heartbreaking number of victims that were subjected to his abuse.
MYTH 4: J.K. Rowling deleted the records of her superyacht to hide her visits to Little St. James Island.
Now here comes an odd one. Honestly, I do not know much about the nautical life. To be frank, my knowledge is limited to the fact that – like my patience when taking my shoes off – the speed of boats can be measured in knots. All the same, I have tried to take a look into this myth.
An X user, @hehimta, claimed that Rowling’s superyacht Samsara deactivated its AIS (Automatic Identification System) and “wiped years of port call logs”, citing the fact that the marinetraffic.com vessel page was inaccessible.
When approached for comment by email, MarineTraffic’s AI agent replied with the following explanation (a request for human verification has been sent):
“When a vessel page becomes inaccessible on our platform, this typically indicates that we haven’t received fresh AIS signals from that vessel for 24 hours or more. If there’s no recent position data, vessels are automatically removed from the Live Map until we receive new transmissions.
Common reasons for missing vessel data include:
• The vessel’s AIS transponder is turned off or not operational
• The vessel is sailing outside our terrestrial AIS coverage area
• Signal transmission issues or equipment problems
Important clarification: An inaccessible vessel page doesn’t indicate wrongdoing or deliberate concealment. Our system relies entirely on AIS signals transmitted by vessels. When vessels stop transmitting, we simply display their last known location until new signals are received.
For private vessels, AIS transponder installation is optional, and owners can choose when to transmit. The absence of tracking data is a normal part of AIS-based systems and resolves automatically once vessels resume transmission.
This technical explanation should help clarify that vessel tracking gaps are routine operational matters rather than indicators of maritime law violations.”
Translation: gaps in AIS-based tracking are normal, and a missing page on one site is not proof of wrongdoing. It is simply proof that the site does not currently have data to display.
One can debate what private yacht owners should do. But “MarineTraffic doesn’t show it” is not the same sentence as “years of logs were wiped to conceal criminal travel”. Conflating the two is exactly how conspiracy thinking functions: start with a mundane technical explanation, then sprint past it into melodrama.
Oh, and as for whether any of this proves that Rowling used Samsara to visit Epstein’s Island back in the day… She bought her yacht in 20232.
MYTH 5: J.K. Rowling invited Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to visit the set of HBO’s Harry Potter.
On the basis of blind belief in the above myths, some people have even gone so far as to put forward the idea that Rowling was, and remains, a great friend of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – and that she personally invited him to visit the set of HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter television adaptation.
It is a matter of public record (and was reported at the time by the Daily Mail) that Andrew visited the set of Hogsmeade Station and the Hogwarts Express in Windsor Great Park with his grandchildren. However, there is nothing to suggest that J.K. Rowling personally invited Andrew, or even that she was aware of this visit.
Some have suggested the location was chosen to facilitate the visit. This collapses as soon as you apply even a teaspoon of production reality. Location filming is a logistical headache: scouting, permissions, transport, safety, schedules, weather, crew movement – and, in this case, the additional circus of bringing a train and track infrastructure into the equation.
This is not mere speculation: The Sun newspaper described the Hogwarts Express’s delivery as “a military-style operation”, with the £4 million set featuring half a mile of train tracks “running through woodland”3. The idea that a production would contort itself to facilitate a visit by an executive producer’s friend is more fantastical than even Rowling herself could dream up.
The Daily Mail also reported that crew members were shocked to see him4, which rather undermines the idea of a carefully arranged, warmly anticipated invitation. And if a powerful figure had been invited in the manner conspiracy accounts suggest, you would expect the press handling to be far smoother than “awkward surprise”.
One can speculate about why the story emerged at all, but speculation is not evidence. Which brings us neatly back to the theme of this entire genre of posting: a preference for vibes over verification.
Conclusion
If there is one lesson to take from this week’s nonsense, it is this: conspiracy accounts do not need proof. They need props – a PDF, a screenshot, an out-of-context email signature, a broken web page – that can be waved around like a magician’s scarf while the audience politely refrains from looking at the other hand.
In the material being circulated, the simplest reading is also the most grounded: Epstein attempted to access a high-profile event through intermediaries; he was not on the original list; and he failed to gain entry. The “Jx” signature proves nothing beyond the fact that people sometimes sign messages with initials. An AIS tracking gap proves nothing beyond the fact that AIS tracking gaps exist. And a set visit on royal land proves, at most, that royals are as susceptible as the rest of us to the very British urge to be nosy at what’s happening in one’s neighbourhood.
The internet will continue to reward confident wrongness, because confident wrongness is faster to consume than careful reading. But the remedy is unglamorous and brutally effective: insist on primary sources, distinguish evidence from inference, and treat viral certainty as the flashing warning light it usually is.
Misinformation thrives on the assumption that nobody will double-check what they read – and too often, it is a safe assumption. Everything in modern life pushes us towards the surface: the scroll, the outrage, the easy thrill of certainty. Resisting that takes self-discipline. It is up to each of us to slow down, check, and think for ourselves.
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I found someone else (musician Jamie Lawson) who signs 'Jx' within two minutes of Googling. Admittedly not a woman which that email implies but it really wasn't hard to prove that signing that way isn't unique to one person.
There is some real barrel scraping going on over this.
And the fact is most of this stuff is only being said because of the email chain about Epstein trying to get into the play premier and dinner and conclusions being jumped to, which as I see it only happen if one doesn't study what these emails actually say. Without that, what are the odds someone notices a 'Jx' in the files and links it to Rowling? Likewise who'd be looking at her yacht's live tracking at that precise time and trying to tie that to their conspiracy theory as well?
Also regarding her yacht, it's also a matter of record that she purchased it in 2023. Epstein died in 2019.