Norway has lost a senior diplomat to the Jeffrey Epstein fallout. Mona Juul, Oslo's ambassador to Jordan and Iraq, stepped down Sunday after her government said newly released documents showed troubling contacts with the disgraced financier. Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide called it "a serious lapse in judgment" and said the situation made it hard to maintain the level of trust required for her post, per Politico. The Foreign Ministry had previously suspended Juul upon opening an inquiry into what she knew about Epstein and whether their relationship affected her work.
The ministry did not spell out the details it says emerged from US Justice Department files, but Norwegian media have focused on Juul's husband, diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen. Emails from June 2019—weeks before Epstein's arrest on sex trafficking charges—describe Epstein planning a dinner in Paris with Rød-Larsen and former Council of Europe chief Thorbjørn Jagland. The names of Juul, Rød-Larsen, and Jagland appear multiple times in the newly released correspondence. The Foreign Ministry has said it will also review prior grants to the International Peace Institute think tank previously run by Rød-Larsen, per Reuters.
Juul's lawyer, Thomas Skjelbred, said she will first explain her contacts with Epstein to the Foreign Ministry in meetings expected this week. Eide said authorities must determine "the extent of her contact with Epstein in her capacity as an employee of the ministry" and whether her past explanations match the newer information. Juul previously served as a Labour Party politician and as Norway's ambassador to Israel, Britain, and the United Nations. With her husband, she was central to the secret talks that produced the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the early 1990s. (Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell had a behind-the-scenes role in Clinton world.)
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