billionaire

Jeffrey Epstein pressured a media tycoon he did business with to quash coverage of allegations of his sexual abuse of girls, according to documents released by the United States Department of Justice.

Epstein leveraged close personal and professional ties with the Canadian-American billionaire Mortimer Zuckerman to try to influence the New York Daily News’s coverage of allegations against him after his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution, the documents show.

After Epstein reached out to Zuckerman, the then-owner of the Daily News, the tabloid first delayed its coverage of the allegations and then omitted details that the late financier had specifically requested be left out, according to the documents.

In an email dated October 9, 2009, Epstein shared a “proposed answer” to questions from the newspaper with Zuckerman that disputed allegations made against him and his girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking.

The allegations, which had been put to Epstein and Maxwell by then-Daily News journalist George Rush, included accusations that the pair had subjected a minor known as “Jane Doe No 102” to routine sexual abuse and had engaged in threesomes with “various underage girls”.

The allegations also included claims that Maxwell kept a computer database of “hundreds of girls and oversaw the schedule of girls who came to Epstein’s homes”.

In the proposed response that he shared with Zuckerman, Epstein said “no sex occurred” with Jane Doe No 102 and she had admitted in a deposition to being an “escort, call girl, and a massage parlor worker since the age of 15”.

“All of the adult establishments in which she admitted working require proof of age. Rc the rest of the questions,” Epstein’s email to Zuckerman said.

“These are all malicious fabrications designed to get Mr Edwards clients more money than they normally receive though she did testify under oath that she made as much as 2000 per day,” the email said, referring to Bradley J Edwards, a Florida-based lawyer who has represented many of Epstein’s accusers.

Later that day, Zuckerman told Epstein in an email that the Daily News was “doing major editing over huge objections” and he would “c copy asap”.

“take ghislaine out. if possible,” Epstein responded in an email a few minutes later.

“the very first plaintiff, deposed admitted in a sworn videotaped statement that she lied and was an escort , call girl since age 15. SHE took the fifth. over 40 times.. its crazy.. thanks for you help.”

“Please call me asap,” Zuckerman wrote to Epstein several hours later, before asking Epstein to call him again later that night.

The Daily News ultimately published an article on December 19, 2009, that described Epstein reaching a settlement with his accuser for an undisclosed amount of money.

The article noted that Epstein was facing “more than a dozen” lawsuits from women who accused him of sexually abusing them but made no mention of Maxwell or the allegations against her.

Zuckerman, a staunch supporter of Israel who served as head of the America-Israel Friendship League and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, has never been accused of any involvement in Epstein’s crimes.

Rush, who left the Daily News in 2010, confirmed that Epstein had tried to “cajole” Zuckerman, the current owner of US News & World Report, into burying or shaping the story to Epstein’s liking.

Rush said the Daily News decided to delay publication after Epstein offered the newspaper an interview.

“Unfortunately, Epstein immediately insisted that the interview be off the record. He also used the conversation to make remorseless claims that he was a victim of overzealous prosecutors and shyster lawyers,” Rush told Al Jazeera.

Rush said Zuckerman, who sold the Daily News in 2017, never suggested that the newspaper cancel the story altogether or publish coverage that was favourable to Epstein.

“I do recall being advised to leave Ghislaine Maxwell out of the story,” Rush said.

“At the time, the paper’s lawyers had libel concerns, and I saw it as a necessary compromise.”

Rush said he had objected to the efforts to interfere in his story but the episode did not cause a “newsroom furore”.

“Most people hadn’t heard of Epstein at that point. I didn’t like Epstein and Maxwell trying to appeal to the owner,” he said.

“But I was relieved that the story wasn’t killed, just delayed, and hopeful that Epstein might say something quotable in the interview. It speaks to Epstein’s arrogance that he thought he had the power to get Mort to do his bidding.”

Zuckerman’s personal assistant and the Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program, an initiative founded by the billionaire to fund scientific collaboration between the US and Israel, did not reply to requests for comment from Al Jazeera.

Ties for two decades

Zuckerman’s ties to Epstein stretch back more than 20 years.

In 2005, Zuckerman, who also owned The Atlantic magazine from 1984 to 1999, worked with Epstein on the short-lived relaunch of the gossip-and-entertainment magazine Radar.

After a US congressional panel in September released a scrapbook prepared for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003, Zuckerman was among a slew of high-profile names revealed to have sent the financier their well-wishes.

But the latest tranche of files from the 2019 prosecution of Epstein, released last week by US authorities, show that Zuckerman’s relationship with the sex offender was much closer than previously believed.

In 2008, Zuckerman sought Epstein’s advice on his plans for passing on his estate, sharing sensitive details about his financial affairs in the process, including a copy of his will and an evaluation of his assets that put his net worth at $1.9bn.

In 2013, Epstein drafted several agreements to provide Zuckerman with “analysing, evaluating, planning and other services” related to the billionaire’s plans for passing on his wealth.

Epstein proposed a fee of $30m in a proposal drafted in June 2013 before offering his services for $21m in a revised proposal that December, according to the documents.

In correspondence around this period, Zuckerman appeared to hold Epstein’s claimed expertise in high regard.

“Your questions have been critical to my growing understanding of how much lies ahead before my finances are properly organized,” Zuckerman wrote to Epstein in an email dated October 12, 2013, after the financier had earlier claimed to have identified “wild errors” in Zuckerman’s accounting of his finances.

“You have been an invaluable friend and In the most constructive way a provocateur I am completely grateful and am now beginning to focus, in on the issues you have raised. With appreciation from a hesitant amateur   Mort.”

It is not clear whether Zuckerman ultimately signed the agreement proposed by Epstein.

Zuckerman and Epstein communicated regularly, and the two men arranged numerous dinners and other meetings over the years, according to the documents, including at the financier’s Manhattan home.

“Mort is now booked for tonight at 8:30…i am being asked if you could see him this weekend…please advise,” Lesley Groff, Epstein’s personal assistant, wrote on May 5, 2015, in one of many emails detailing appointments.

While Zuckerman turned to Epstein for financial advice, he also appeared to regard him as a friend.

“Hi there. You are very special. And a great friend. Mort,” Zuckerman wrote to Epstein in an email dated August 24, 2014.

SAN FRANCISCO — As California struggles with homelessness and healthcare cuts, some activists are taking on an unexpected cause: fighting for billionaires.

About a dozen people took part in the “March for Billionaires” on Saturday morning in San Francisco to raise awareness about the plight of the ultrarich. Although some assumed the event was satire, organizer Derik Kauffman said it was a sincere protest against a potential new tax on the state’s wealthiest residents.

“We must not judge billionaires as a class but by their individual merits,” he said, speaking outside the San Francisco Civic Center. “There are good billionaires and bad billionaires, just like there are good people and bad people. California is extraordinarily lucky that this is where people come to start companies and build fortunes and we should do our best to keep it that way.”

The Billionaire Tax Act is a proposed state ballot initiative that would levy a one-time, 5% tax on the state’s billionaires to help offset recent federal cuts that have affected healthcare and food-assistance programs. The tax would apply to their overall net worth but would exclude pensions, real estate and retirement accounts.

Supporters say it would benefit the majority of the state’s residents and help ensure billionaires pay their fair share. Opponents — including Gov. Gavin Newsom — argue it will cause billionaires and the businesses they own to flee the state, taking jobs and tax dollars with them.

Kauffman echoed those concerns Saturday and said everyone should want billionaires to remain in California.

“This tax will drive billionaires out; it already has,” he said. “The founders of Google — they left the state and they are taking their money with them.”

Google is still headquartered in California, but other companies tied to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin recently lef the state, including T-Rex Holdings, which moved from Palo Alto to Reno last year.

San Francisco Jan. 7, 2026 Two counter-protesters mockingly impersonated billionaires by playing characters they dubbed “Oli Garch” and “Trilly O’Naire.”

(Katie King / Los Angeles Times)

The event attracted a few dozen humorous counterprotesters.

Razelle Swimmer carried around a puppet of the Swedish Chef from the Muppets, brandishing knives and wearing an apron that said “Eat the Rich.” Swimmer told The Times she doesn’t believe billionaires need more protections.

“If they aren’t willing to pay more taxes, then I don’t really care if they leave,” she said.

Other counterprotesters mockingly impersonated billionaires by donning crowns or top hats. A man and woman, playing characters called Oli Garch and Trilly O’Naire, said they worried what would happen if the tax passed.

“There is a small chance that my helicopter won’t be able to have a sauna in it just because apparently some kids want dental work or something,” said the woman, as she adjusted her tiara.

At one point, a man wearing a gold crown and carrying a sign that said “Let them eat cake” ran through the crowd shouting, “Keep the poors away from me.”

The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the main backer of the tax proposal, needs to collect about 875,000 signatures by June 24 in order to get the measure on the November ballot.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office, which offers guidance to the Legislature about budgetary issues, has cautioned that the tax might lead to only short-term benefits.

“It is likely that some billionaires decide to leave California,” the agency stated in a recent analysis. “The income taxes they currently pay to the state would go away with their departure. The reduction in state revenues from these kinds of responses could be hundreds of millions of dollars or more per year.”

California has roughly 200 billionaires, the most of any state. Their collective wealth was $2.2 trillion in October, up from $300 billion in 2011, according to a December report from law and economics professors at UC Berkeley, UC Davis and the University of Missouri.

The researchers concluded that billionaires in the United States pay less in taxes, relative to income, than the average American.

“It is estimated that, including all taxes at all levels of government, billionaires paid only 24% of their true economic income in taxes in years 2018-20 while the U.S.-wide average was 30%,” the report states.

SAN FRANCISCO — Gov. Gavin Newsom, barred from running for reelection, still took heat Tuesday during the first debate in California’s 2026 race for governor.

Six Democrats and one Republican on the stage in Newsom’s hometown of San Francisco took direct aim at the governor’s record on homelessness, efforts to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars and opposition to an anti-crime ballot measure that Californians overwhelmingly passed two years ago.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who unsuccessfully ran against Newsom for governor in 2018, pointed to state spending on homelessness as an example of ineptitude.

“We spent $24 billion at the state, along with billions more from the counties and the cities throughout the state, and homelessness went on,” he said. “We cannot be afraid to look in the mirror.”

The televised debate revealed the schism between the moderate and progressive Democrats hoping to replace Newsom, as well as efforts by Steve Hilton, the sole Republican who took part, to coalesce the conservative vote.

Hilton, a former Fox New commentator and British political strategist, called on his top GOP rival, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, to drop out of the race.

“My Republican colleague Chad Bianco is not here tonight to face these Democrats or his record in 2020, during the Black Lives Matter riots,” Hilton said at the event, which was co-sponsored by the nonprofit Black Action Alliance, which was founded to give Black voters a greater voice in the Bay Area.

Bianco “took a knee when told to by BLM, now he says he was praying,” Hilton said. “Chad Bianco has got more baggage than LAX.”

Bianco was invited to the debate but said he was unable to attend because of a scheduling conflict. His campaign did not respond to requests for comment about Hilton’s attacks.

The, at times, feisty debate came amid a gubernatorial race that thus far has lacked sizzle or a candidate on either side of the aisle who has excited Californians. Public opinion polls show that most voters remain undecided.

Seven of the dozen prominent candidates running to replace Newsom participated in the gathering at the Ruth Williams Opera House in front of a live audience of about 200 people. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) was scheduled to participate but canceled, citing the need to go back to Washington, D.C., for congressional votes. Former Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) also did not attend the debate.

The two-hour clash, at times plagued by audio issues, was hosted by two local Fox News affiliates and moderated by KTVU political reporter Greg Lee and anchor André Senior, as well as KTTV’s Marla Tellez.

Five takeaways from the debate:

Making California affordable again

When grilled about how they planned to tackle the high cost of living in the state — gas prices, rent, utility bills and other day-to-day financial challenges — most of the candidates prefaced their answers by talking about growing up in struggling households, often with immigrant parents who worked blue-collar jobs.

Former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said he would stabilize rents and freeze utility and home insurance costs “until we find out why they’re increasing.” California Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said he would raise taxes on billionaires and create tax credits to help families afford the high cost of living.

Villaraigosa and Hilton said they would lower gas prices by cutting regulations on California’s oil refineries.

Hilton blamed the state’s high cost of living squarely on Democratic policies. “They’ve been in power for 16 years,” he said. “Who else is there to blame?”

Billionaire hedge fund founder turned climate activist Tom Steyer said he favors rent control. Steyer and former state Controller Betty Yee said they would prioritize zoning and permitting reform to build more housing, particularly near public transit. Both Steyer, a progressive, and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a moderate, spoke about using new technology such as pre-fabricated homes to build more affordable housing.

Protecting immigrants

In the wake of the Trump administration’s chaotic immigration raids that started in Los Angeles in June and have spread across the nation — recently resulting in the shooting deaths of two people by federal agents in Minneapolis — the Democrats on stage unanimously voiced support for immigrants who live in California. Some pledged that, if elected, they would use the governor’s office to aggressively push back on President Trump’s immigration policies.

“We’ve got to say no to ICE, and we’ve got to take on Trump wherever he raises his ugly head,” Villaraigosa said.

Steyer, whose hedge fund invested in a company that runs migrant detention centers on the U.S.-Mexico border, and Thurmond both said they support abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Thurmond and Mahan said they support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Politicians politicking

Antonio Villaraigosa, left, talks to Betty Yee during the California gubernatorial candidate debate Tuesday in San Francisco.

(Laure Andrillon / Associated Press)

Amid the debate’s dodging, weaving, yammering and spicy back-and-forth, there were a few moments when the candidates rose above the din.

Villaraigosa, the former two-term mayor of Los Angeles and a former speaker of the California Assembly, insisted that the moderators call him “Antonio” instead of Mayor Villaraigosa.

“It’s my name, everybody. I’m just a regular guy,” he said, prompting a laugh.

Mahan, on the other hand, tried mightily to portray himself as being above the dirty business of politics.

“The truth is that our politics has been oversimplified,” he said. “It’s become this blood sport between populists on both sides, and you deserve real answers, not the easy answers.”

Yee, who has been running on her background as controller and a member of the California Board of Equalization, cast herself as the financial savior the state needs in trying economic times of budget deficits and federal cuts.

“We have not been accountable or transparent with our dollars for a long time,” she said. “Why are we right now and [in successive] years spending more than we’re bringing in? This is where we are. So accountability has to be a tone set from the top.”

The rich guy and the new guy

Steyer, who paints himself as a repentant billionaire devoted to giving away his riches to make California a better place for all, did not directly answer a question about his position on a controversial proposed ballot measure for a new tax on billionaires to fund healthcare. But he said he supported increasing taxes on the wealthy and boasted of having the political backing of bus drivers, nurses and cafeteria workers because he was the rich guy willing to “take on the billionaires for working families.”

Mahan, the latest major candidate to enter the race, wasn’t impressed.

“Tom, I’ve got about 3 billion reasons not to trust your answer on that,” he said, an apparent reference to Steyer’s net worth.

Although he supports closing tax loopholes for the wealthy, Mahan said he opposes the billionaire tax because “it will send good, high-paying jobs out of our state, and hard-working families, in the long run, will all pay more taxes for it.”

Money also spoke Tuesday

Although the battle over campaign fundraising didn’t overtly arise during Tuesday’s debate aside from Mahan’s comment about Steyer, it still was getting a lot of attention. Campaign fundraising disclosures became public Monday and Tuesday.

Unsurprisingly, Steyer led the pack with $28.9 million in contributions in 2025, nearly all of it donations that the billionaire spent on his campaign. Other top fundraisers were Porter, who raised $6.1 million; Hilton, who collected $5.7 million; Becerra, who banked $5.2 million; Bianco, who received $3.7 million in contributions; Swalwell’s $3.1 million since entering the race late last year; and Villaraigosa’s $3.2 million, according to documents filed with the California secretary of state’s office.

Mahan, who recently entered the race, wasn’t required to file a campaign fundraising disclosure, though he is expected to have notable support from wealthy Silicon Valley tech honchos. Former state Controller Betty Yee and state schools chief Tony Thurmond were among the candidates who raised the least, which spurs questions about their viability in a state of more than 23 million registered voters with some of the most expensive media markets in the nation.

Yee defended her candidacy by pointing to her experience.

“All the polls show that this race is wide open. You know, I think voters have had enough. I’ve been around the state. I’ve spoken to thousands of them,” she said. “Enough of the lies, the broken campaign promises, billionaires trying to run the world. You know, look, I’m the adult in the room. No gimmicks, no nonsense, straight shooter, the woman who gets things done. And we certainly can’t afford a leader who thinks grandstanding is actually governing.”

Mehta reported from Los Angeles and Nixon reported from San Francisco. Data and graphics journalists Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee and Hailey Wang contributed to this report.

SACRAMENTO — Matt Mahan, the mayor of San José and latest entrant into the jam-packed race for California governor, has in recent years raised his profile outside his Silicon Valley-area city by doing something most other elected Democrats would never: publicly criticize Gov. Gavin Newsom.

With the primary election almost four months away, candidates have already been busy trying to convince Californians that they can lead the state through its biggest challenges, including what they might do differently than Newsom on homelessness, crime and the high cost of living.

Democratic hopefuls have so far done so subtly, without taking direct shots at Newsom.

Until Mahan entered the race.

The 43-year-old-mayor began carving a moderate path in 2024, when he broke with Newsom and other Democrats to back Proposition 36, which increased penalties for theft and crimes involving fentanyl. Despite opposition from Newsom and legislative leaders, voters overwhelmingly approved it.

Mahan has also given mixed reviews to the Newsom administration’s approach to homelessness; he has praised efforts to make it easier for cities to clear homeless encampments but criticized inconsistent funding from the state to help local governments build interim housing.

Although most Democrats running to replace Newsom have praised his fiery opposition to President Trump and the Republican-led Congress, including the governor’s outlandish online trolling of Trump and his allies, Mahan was not impressed.

“Instead of spending so much energy attacking his opponents, the governor and his team should be addressing the high cost of energy, helping hard-pressed families make ends meet and keeping them and their employers from fleeing our state,” Mahan wrote last summer in a piece for the San Francisco Standard.

Mahan told reporters last week that his disagreements with Newsom are “rooted in substance” and praised the governor for muscling through major reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act and behavioral health treatment.

“I see the job of the next governor” as “building on many of the initiatives [Newsom] has championed,” he said, adding he would use those new reforms to build more housing and treatment facilities for people struggling with addiction and mental illness.

Newsom has routinely won approval from the state’s Democratic base, as well as respect and deference from its elected leaders, and his notoriety as a top foe of Trump continues to rise. Because the perch of California governor provides Democrats with an effective cudgel against the Republican administration, attacking Newsom could easily backfire in this left-leaning state.

“It’s a very delicate balancing act” to campaign to replace a leader of one’s own party, said Democratic strategist Garry South, who has worked on four California gubernatorial campaigns.

“The traditional way to do it is to try to project that you will build on things that the incumbent has done: programs they started, successes they’ve had,” he said.

South, who ran Newsom’s first, short-lived, campaign for governor in 2009, took issue with Mahan’s criticisms of the governor.

“To stick it to the incumbent of your own party might be OK if that person is viewed as a failure. … The fact is, Newsom is not unpopular. This guy’s had four massive victories in California,” he said, listing Newsom’s two elections in 2018 and 2022, defeating a recall in 2021 and overwhelmingly passing Proposition 50 last year.

Like Mahan, billionaire venture-capitalist-turned-environmentalist Tom Steyer has cast himself as an outsider of California’s Democratic establishment. Though he has so far avoided disparaging anyone directly, Steyer dinged “Sacramento politicians [who] are afraid to change this system” when he launched his campaign in November.

Early on in his campaign, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa indicated he would backtrack on Newsom’s strict oil drilling limits and what he calls heavy-handed regulations, which the industry has blamed for the state’s high gas prices.

A Phillips 66 refinery shut down last fall and a Valero refinery in Northern California plans to idle by the end of April, raising concerns that prices in the state’s isolated fuels market could climb even higher.

Villaraigosa previously told The Times he is “not fighting for refineries” but “for the people who pay for gas in this state.”

The former mayor took a more aggressive approach in the California’s governor’s race in 2018, when Villaraigosa accused Newsom of selling “snake oil” with his support for single-payer healthcare in order to win over the nurses union and progressives. Villaraigosa, who ran on a moderate platform, finished in a distant third place in the primary, and Newsom went on to win two terms as governor.

Former Rep. Katie Porter has gone in a more progressive direction on oil. When asked in October to name a policy arena in which she would act differently than Newsom, Porter said she would not have signed recent legislation to allow 2,000 new oil wells in Kern County.

“Drilling new wells is locking us into 100-plus years of energy of the past,” she said. “I absolutely know that we need our refineries to stay open. … But I’m concerned about the environmental consequences, the environmental justice consequences, the shortened lifespan and pollution that we see in some of our fossil fuel-producing places.”

While Newsom and most other candidates for governor have raised concerns about a proposed statewide ballot measure to tax the assets of billionaires, primarily to raise billions of dollars in revenue to blunt the impact of federal healthcare cuts, Tony Thurmond, the state superintendent of public instruction, has embraced the idea.

Even before the potential ballot measure drove some billionaires into leaving the state, Thurmond said that if elected, he would introduce a tax “solely on megamillionaires and billionaires to hire more teachers, healthcare workers, firefighters, construction workers and social workers,” who would earn “decent middle-class wages” to bolster the state’s economy.

Thurmond has also repeatedly said he would pursue single-payer healthcare in California, a promise Newsom also campaigned on before his first term but did not fully deliver.

Betty Yee, a former state controller and budget director, has pitched herself as the most qualified candidate to fix California’s ongoing budget deficits, and took swipes at accounting tricks Newsom and other governors have used in the past.

Newsom and state lawmakers have faced criticism for using short-term tactics like deferred spending and internal borrowing to fill budget shortfalls while ignoring the larger issue: The state regularly spends more money than it brings in.

“No more gimmicks. We can’t kick the can down the road anymore,” Yee said during a recent interview with KTLA. She said she would implement “spending cuts — not like DOGE” and explore “corporations and upper-income earners” potentially paying more tax revenue.

Newsom, aware that he’s entering lame-duck status, has jokingly called himself “a milk carton with a sell-by date” and admitted “these questions about who’s next and all that are uncomfortable.”

Asked specifically about Mahan’s criticisms, Newsom on Thursday declined to fuel any supposed rivalry with the San José mayor.

“I don’t know enough about him,” the governor said. “I wish him good luck.”

Times staff writer Taryn Luna contributed to this report.

NICOLA Peltz gets a staggering $1 million-a-month allowance from her billionaire father, according to new claims.

The actress’ husband Brooklyn Beckham may come from one of the most famous families in the world but her family have them beat when it comes to wealth. 

Peltz family patriarch Nelson, 83, has a net worth of $1.6 billion while David, 50, and 51-year-old Victoria’s combined is thought to be around half of that. 

Journalist Marina Hyde said on The Rest is Entertainment podcast: “From what I hear I think the Beckhams give Brooklyn a lot of money but not insane money and they have this dream to some degree that he will stand on his own two feet and become independent.

“Maybe Nelson Peltz would deny this but I hear that he said to them, ‘I give my daughter a million dollar a month allowance’.

“The one thing they [the Beckhams] didn’t think their children would be doing would be the ones signing the prenuptial, they thought it would be the other way round.”

wine & dine

Brooklyn & Nicola look loved up as they enjoy ‘world’s most expensive wine’

SIBLING SAGA

Nicola Peltz wanted Harper to be ‘my little sister so bad’ despite family feud

The Sun has contacted Nicola’s rep for comment.

If the claims are true, Nicola and Brooklyn appear to be enjoying spending her dad’s hard-earned cash, with them sipping on the world’s ‘most expensive wine’ during a romantic date night this week.

The Sun revealed last year how Nicola, 31, and Brooklyn, 26, had bought a £11 million Hollywood mansion – but that she is the primary owner.

And money appeared to be the beginning of the problems between the Peltz family and the Beckhams, with the former branding the latter “tight” for not matching Nelson penny for penny when it came to buying their children the home.

A source told us at the time: “Certainly, in the case of the ­Beckhams vs Peltzes, it’s proven… tricksy. David and Victoria are two working-class kids done good.

“They have grafted hard for their money and understand that with privilege comes responsibility.

“On principle, they will not needlessly spoil their kids and have taught them the value of both industry and money. They’re like Gordon and Tana Ramsay in that regard.

“So, when it came to buying this house, of course they weren’t just going to hand their son millions of pounds — what sort of message does that send?

“Nelson Peltz, on the other hand, is a billionaire investor and he and his wife Claudia regard Nicola, their little girl, as the apple of their eye.

“Understandably, they want to indulge her and ensure she never struggles — they expected the ­Beckhams, worth half a billion ­themselves, might match them penny for penny. Or, at least, chip in with financials as and when.

“That hasn’t always happened, so they are annoyed and telling people it’s a bit tight.”

The Sun revealed last week how Brooklyn had been made to sign a pre-nup before his 2022 wedding, stopping him staking a claim on any of her family’s money in the unlikely case they separate.

We also told how the Beckhams fear they won’t speak to their eldest son again while he’s married to Nicola, following his bombshell six-page social media statement.

A source said: “Despite everything that’s happened, David and Victoria still love their son.

“He will always be their boy, and there will always be a place for him in their home.

“They have tried everything in their power to mend their relationship with him and it hasn’t worked.

“Now it feels like there is no going back while he is still with Nicola.”

KATIE Price’s fantasist husband Lee Andrews has dropped another wild claim after describing himself as a ‘billionaire’. 

Former glamour model Katie, 47, tied the knot with “real gentleman” Lee – who claims to be a Dubai-based businessman – on Sunday. 

Since then The Sun has unmasked him as a fantasist who faked celebrity links using AI-generated photos and recently talked about marrying two other women.

Now a YouTube video has resurfaced showing Lee starring in a US short film titled Altum Ratio, in which he plays a man grieving the loss of his wife. 

During the clip Lee is heard using an unconvincing American accent while giving his best performance.

Failed actor is just another title to add to Lee’s questionable CV, after he claimed to have once worked as the Director of Philanthropy at The Prince’s Trust (now The King’s Trust).

‘IT’S NOT ME!’

Katie Price’s hubby appears on escort site for £900 – but blames ‘angry ex’

BACKTRACKING

Katie Price’s husband DELETES fake pic with Kim Kardashian

Lee also shared images – since proven to be AI – of him working with Elon Musk and Kim Kardashian.

It’s been revealed shameless Lee told former girlfriends that he had studied at Cambridge University, and has a PhD in biotechnology science.

But The Sun has seen a response from the university explaining it could not find a record of Lee being registered as a student with a date of birth they had provided.

His LinkedIn profile says Lee has been a Member of the Board of Advisors to the Labour Party since 2015.

But a Labour source said: “We don’t have a board of advisors and he doesn’t work with us.”

The King’s Trust also confirmed Lee does not hold the role of Director of Philanthropy, and it has no record of him as a volunteer, or under the moniker Weslee Andrews, which he uses online.

Today Lee deleted an AI image of US reality star Kim, 45, from his Instagram profile.

The image appeared to show her at at event for Lee’s Aura Group business – but it’s disappeared from his grid.

A source close to Kim told The Sun: “Kim doesn’t know him, the photo is faked.

“This happens to her all the time – she’s never met or worked with this man.”

Yesterday, Lee was mocked for repeating the exact same proposal on Katie – that he did for another woman just four months ago.

He popped the question to fitness fan Alana Percival in September after they met in May on a Dubai beach.

Just a few months on, Lee picked the same private tub at Dubai’s Burj Al Arab hotel to propose to Katie.

Some have also accused Lee of giving Katie the same engagement ring that he gave to his ex-wife Dina Sari Taji.

Katie Price’s relationship history

We take a look back at the highs and lows of Katie Price’s relationship history.

1996-1998: Katie got engaged to Gladiators star Warren Furman – aka Ace – with a £3,000 ring. But their relationship didn’t make it as far as ‘I do’.

1998-2000: Katie described Dane Bowers as ‘the love of her life’ but she broke up with the singer after he allegedly cheated on her.

2001: Footballer Dwight Yorke is the father of Katie’s eldest child Harvey. He has had very little to do with his son throughout his life.

2002: Rebounding from Dwight, Katie famously had one night of passion with Pop Idol star Gareth Gates, allegedly taking his virginity.

2002-2004: Katie was dating Scott Sullivan when she entered the jungle for I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!. He threatened to “punch Peter’s lights out” when chemistry blossomed between her and Peter Andre.

2004-2009: The jungle romance resulted in Katie marrying Aussie pop star Peter. They had two kids, Junior and Princess, before their bitter split in 2009.

2010-2011: Fresh from her break-up with Peter, Katie enjoyed a whirlwind relationship and marriage with cage fighter Alex Reid. They split 20 months after their Las Vegas wedding.

2011: Katie briefly dated model Danny Cipriani… but it ended as quickly as it begun.

2011-2012: They didn’t speak the same language, but Katie got engaged to Argentinian model Leandro Penna in 2011. He later fled home to South America.

2012-2018: Wedding bells rang once more after Katie met Kieran Hayler in 2013. They eventually called it quits after a rocky marriage.

2018-2019: Katie moved on quickly with Kris Boyson. They had an on-off romance for one year and even got engaged. They split for good in 2019.

2019: Katie was linked to Charles Drury during her on-off relationship with Kris. Charles, who also dated Lauren Goodger, has always denied being in “official relationship” with her.

2020-2023: Car salesman Carl Woods took a shine to Katie in 2020. Their relationship was up and down for three years. They broke up for a final time last year.

2024-2026: After weeks of rumours, Katie confirmed her relationship with Married At First Sight star JJ Slater in February 2024. The pair split in January 2026 after two years together.

2026: Katie shocked fans when she revealed she had married Dubai-based businessman Lee Andrews after a 48-hour engagement and only knowing him a week.

In the roiling debate over California’s proposed billionaire tax, supporters and critics agree that such policies haven’t always worked in the past. But the lessons they’ve drawn from that history are wildly different.

The Billionaire Tax Act, which backers are pushing to get on the November ballot, would charge California’s 200-plus billionaires a one-time, 5% tax on their net worth in order to backfill billions of dollars in Republican-led cuts to federal healthcare funding for middle-class and low-income residents.

Critics of the proposal have argued that past failures of similar wealth taxes in Europe prove they don’t work and can cause more harm than good, including by driving the ultra-rich out. Among those critics is San José Mayor Matt Mahan, a tech-friendly Democrat who is contemplating a run for governor.

“Over the last 30 years, we’ve seen a dozen European countries pursue national-level wealth taxes,” Mahan said. “Nine of them have rolled them back. A majority have seen a decline in overall revenue. It’s actually shrunk the tax base, not increased it, and it’s because it creates a perverse incentive and drives capital flight.”

Backers of the measure acknowledge such failures but say that they learned from them and that California’s proposal is stronger as a result.

Brian Galle, a UC Berkeley tax law professor and one of four academic experts who drafted the measure, said if it gets on the ballot, every voter in the state will receive a copy of the full text, a one-page explainer on what it does, and nearly two dozen additional pages of “rules for preventing wealthy people and their army of lawyers from dodging” it.

Many of those rules, he said, are based on historical lessons from places where such taxes have failed, but also where they’ve succeeded.

“If you understand the actual lessons of history, you understand that this bill is more like the successful Swiss and Spanish wealth taxes,” Galle said. “Part of that is learning from history.”

Warnings from Europe

Since the 1990s, several European countries have repealed net wealth taxes, including Austria, Denmark, Finland, France and Germany.

A major example cited by critics of the California proposal is France, which implemented a much larger wealth tax on far more people, including many millionaires. The measure raised modest revenues, which fell as rich people moved out of the country to avoid paying, and the measure was repealed by the government of President Emmanuel Macron in 2017.

In a 2018 report on net wealth taxes, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development found that European repeals were often driven by “efficiency and administrative concerns and by the observation that net wealth taxes have frequently failed to meet their redistributive goals.”

“The revenues collected from net wealth taxes have also, with a few exceptions, been very low,” it found.

Critics and skeptics of the California proposal say they expect California to run into all the same problems.

Mahan and others have pointed to a handful of prominent billionaires who already appear to be distancing themselves from the state, and said they expect more to follow — which Mahan said will reduce California’s “recurring revenue” beyond the amount raised by the one-time tax.

Kent Smetters, faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, which analyzes the fiscal effects of public policies, said net worth taxes in other countries have “always raised quite a bit less revenue than what was initially projected,” in large part because “wealth is easy, as it turns out, to try to reclassify or move around” and “there’s all these tricks that you can do to try to make the wealth look smaller for tax purposes.”

A bus in London promotes a campaign by British millionaires advocating for an end to extreme wealth and inequality.

(Carl Court / Getty Images)

Smetters said he expects that the California measure will raise less than the $100 billion estimated by its backers because billionaire wealth in California — much of it derived from the tech sector — is relatively “mobile,” as many tech barons can move without it affecting business.

“Policymakers have to understand that they’re not going to get nearly as much money as they often project from a purely static projection, where they’re not accounting for the different ways that people can move their wealth, reclassify their wealth, or even just move out of the state,” Smetters said. “So far, we only know of a few people — with a lot of money — who have moved out of the state, [but] that number could go up.”

Kevin Ghassomian, a private wealth lawyer at Venable who advises rich clients, said he expects the administrative costs of enforcing the tax to be massive for the state — and much greater than the drafters have anticipated.

On the front end, the state will face a wave of legal challenges to the tax’s constitutionality and its retroactive application to all billionaires living in the state as of the end of 2025.

Moving ahead, he said, there will be litigation from wealthy individuals whose departure from California is questioned or who dispute the state’s valuation of their net worth or individual assets — including private holdings, which the state doesn’t have extensive experience assessing.

Valuating such assets will be “a nightmare, just practically speaking, and it’s going to require a lot of administrators at the state level,” Ghassomian said, especially considering many California billionaires’ wealth is in the form of illiquid holdings in startups and other ventures with fluctuating market valuations.

“You could be a billionaire today, and then the market plummets, and now all of a sudden, you’re a pauper,” he said. “It could really lead to some unfair results.”

Lessons from Europe

Backers of California’s proposal said they have accounted for many of the historical pitfalls with wealth taxes and taken steps to avoid them — including by making it harder for wealthy Californians to simply shuffle money around to avoid the tax.

“There are a lot of provisions that are designed based on what has worked well in other countries with wealth taxes in the modern era, especially Switzerland, and there are also provisions meant to shut down some of the holes in some of the earlier wealth tax efforts, especially the France one, that were viewed as not successful,” said David Gamage, a University of Missouri tax law professor and another of the proposal’s drafters.

Galle said the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development study found that many of Europe’s historical wealth taxes “hadn’t figured out how to solve the problem of what small businesses were worth,” so were more narrowly focused on publicly traded stock and real estate. “Over time, there was a lot of abuse where people shifted their assets to make them look privately held.”

The California proposal “tries to solve that problem” by including small businesses and other privately held wealth in their calculations of net worth, he said — and benefits from the fact that such wealth has gotten a lot easier to track and appraise in recent years.

Doing so would be a familiar exercise for many California billionaires already, he said, as it is hard to raise venture capital, for example, without audited financial statements.

Backers of the measure said it is harder for U.S. citizens to avoid taxes by moving abroad than it has been for Europeans, and that evidence from Switzerland and Spain suggests differing tax rates between a nation’s individual states do not cause massive interstate flight.

San José Mayor Matt Mahan, who might run for governor, opposes the proposed tax on California billionaires.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

For example, each state in Spain sets its own wealth tax rate, and Madrid’s is 0% — but that has not caused an exodus from other parts of Spain to Madrid, Galle said.

The risk of California billionaires avoiding the tax by simply moving to another U.S. state was further mitigated by the measure’s Jan. 1 deadline for avoiding the tax. Galle said the deadline “was intended to make it more difficult for individuals to concoct the kind of misleading, apparent moves that wealthy people have used in other places to try to avoid a wealth tax.”

Gamage said that “history shows if a tax on the wealthy can be avoided by moving paper around, claiming that you live in another location without actually moving your life there, moving assets to accounts or trusts nominally in foreign countries or other jurisdictions, you see large mobility responses.”

But when “those paper moves are shut down,” there’s much less moving — and “that’s the basis for the California model,” he added.

The outlook

Ghassomian, who said he has been “fielding a lot of inbound inquiries from clients who are just kind of worried,” said it is clear that the proposal’s authors “have done their homework” and tried to design the tax in a smart way.

Still, he said, he has concerns about the cost of administering the tax outpacing revenues, especially amid litigation. Residency battles alone with billionaires whose claims of departing the state are questioned could take “years and years and years” to resolve, he said.

“The revenue has to line up with expenditures, and if you can’t count on the revenue because it’s going to be tied up in courts, or it’s going to be delayed, then I think that creates some real logistical hurdles,” he said.

Smetters said predicting revenues from a tax on so many different types of assets is “really hard,” but one thing that has generally held true through history is that “most countries, even with less-mobile wealth, typically do not get the type of revenue that they were hoping for.”

David Sacks, a venture capitalist and President Trump’s AI czar who decamped from California to Texas, said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week that the measure was an “asset seizure” more than a tax, and that the state would be headed in a “scary direction” if voters approved it.

Darien Shanske, a tax law professor at UC Davis and another drafter of the proposal, said he and his colleagues did their best to “look at the lessons of the past, and apply them in a way that makes sense and is generally fair and administrable” — in a state where wealth inequality is rapidly growing and a wealth tax presents unique opportunities.

“Having a tax on billionaires does make particular sense in California because of the large number that live here and the large number who have made their fortune here,” he said.

Shanske said the proposed tax is designed to provide California a way to “triage” soaring healthcare premiums resulting from legislation enacted by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans. The proposal asks for contributions from people who will quickly recoup what they are taxed given the exponential growth of their assets, he said.

Emmanuel Saez, director of the Stone Center on Wealth and Income Inequality at UC Berkeley and another drafter of the measure, said many of the repealed European taxes targeted millionaires while providing loopholes for billionaires to avoid paying, whereas California’s measure is “exactly the reverse.”

He said the measure will raise substantial revenue in part because California billionaire wealth more than doubled from 2023 to 2025 alone, and is “the innovative and first-of-its-kind tax on the ultra-wealthy that the moment requires.”

Thomas Piketty, a French economist and author of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” called California’s proposed tax “very innovative” and “relatively modest” compared with massive wealth taxes after World War II — including in Germany and Japan — and said it would not only improve healthcare in the state but “have an enormous impact on the U.S. and international political scene.”

“In the current context, with a deeply entrenched billionaire class, wealth taxes meet even more political resistance than in the postwar context, and this is where California could make a huge difference,” he said. “The fact of targeting the revenue to health spending is also very innovative and can help convince the voters to support the initiative.”

Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.