Photo: Elder Ordonez/INF Photo

“I’m very good at giving away your money,” Woody Allen texted Jeffrey Epstein.

In December 2016, Allen and Epstein were deciding on recipients for a $15,000 donation for Epstein, according to documents in the latest Justice Department release of Epstein materials. Then the director — or, more likely, his wife and ex-step-daughter Soon-Yi Previn — had an idea.

“Please give the entire 15 to Hewitt,” said the message to Epstein from Allen’s phone. “As Woody said, that way they will definitely graduate Manzie.”

At the time, Manzie Allen, the adopted daughter of Allen and Previn, was a 16-year-old enrolled at the Hewitt School, an elite K–12 all-girls school just blocks from Jefrey Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion of horrors. (Also at the time, Previn was frequently using her husband’s phone and email to contact Epstein.) Hours after the text, Epstein’s gift came through. “I just got home and found the contribution,” said the message from Allen’s phone. “You’re the best. It made my day. I can’t thank you enough. The schools never have enough money. This will help them with their expansion.”

The gift went through to the Hewitt School, where tuition is now $67,700 and whose famous alumni include Phoebe Cates and Koo Stark, the former girlfriend of disgraced Epstein confidante Prince Andrew. In July 2019, the school confirmed that it had received a $15,000 donation from Epstein but that it had returned the funds several months earlier. The latest Epstein documents reveal for the first time that the Allens solicited the gift to help their youngest daughter, who graduated in 2018.

It’s not the only instance in the Epstein docs in which the convicted sex trafficker talked about assisting the Allens with their daughters’ education. The emails also show that Epstein lobbied his longtime acquaintance Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, to help Manzie’s older sister, Bechet, get into the liberal-arts school on the Hudson. At the time, she was enrolled at the Brearley School, another elite K–12 girls’ school on the Upper East Side. “I can’t thank you enough for getting Bechet into Bard,” read a message sent from Woody Allen’s email account first reported on by the New York Times.

The Allens did not want their daughter to know of Epstein’s involvement. “I think it’s best that Bechet struggles and doesn’t know ahead of time that she got in so that when she gets into Bard she will have sweated it out a bit and will really want to go,” said the message to Epstein. The correspondence took place less than a month after the Allens secured the $15,000 gift to Hewitt.

The batch of Epstein emails released last week provide a deeper look into the already well-documented relationship between Epstein, Previn, and Allen. They show that Previn sent Epstein a link to a story on the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal in September 2016, writing that the minor the former congressman sexted with was in the wrong. “I also thought it was disgusting what the 15-year-old did,” Previn wrote. “I hate women who take advantage of guys, and she is definitely one of them.” Epstein replied, “Wow.” The next year, Previn wrote that her stepbrother Ronan Farrow’s Me Too reporting gets more prestige “than he deserves.”

New York has reached out to representatives for Woody Allen, Manzie Allen, Previn, and the Hewitt School. In a statement to the New York Times, a representative for Leon Botstein said that Epstein was a “serial liar who apparently took credit for the sun rising each day.” A previous donation from Allen to the Hewitt School included a gift of four tickets to the release and red-carpet party for Allen’s 2013 film Blue Jasmine. In an auction catalogue from that time, they were valued as “priceless.”

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