Carlos Ghosn

The federal lobbying registration for Carlos Ghosn Bichara became effective on November 20, 2018 and listed Brad Karp among the new lobbyists for Paul Weiss ⁴. Seven filings cover the 2018 fourth quarter through a February 25, 2020 termination and describe work directed at media and U.S. government audiences concerning bail and a fair trial in Japan ². The filings report firm-client income of $20,000 for the 2018 fourth quarter, $50,000 in each quarter of 2019, and $20,000 in the 2020 first quarter, totaling $240,000; those figures are not Karp's personal compensation ².

Paul Weiss states that Karp, Michael Gertzman, and Kaye Yoshino led the team for Ghosn's September 23, 2019 SEC settlement, with Daniel Juceam and Chikara Momota also participating ¹. The SEC said Ghosn agreed to a $1 million civil penalty and a ten-year officer-and-director bar without admitting or denying the allegations ¹. No located source traces information supplied by Jeffrey Epstein into that settlement or any other downstream work for Ghosn ¹⁶.

On November 20, 2018, Karp told Epstein he was “dealing with Ghosn crisis,” matching the effective date of the public Ghosn lobbying registration ⁴. On November 30, Epstein asked Tom Pritzker to ask around about Ghosn's incommunicado detention; Pritzker replied only that the situation was “weird” and that he would see ⁵. Thirty-two minutes after Pritzker's reply, Epstein offered Karp “gchosen info,” and Karp answered that the offer was quick, that he was on a DOJ call, and that he would call immediately afterward ⁵³. The wording does not establish that the DOJ call concerned Ghosn ³.

On December 26, Epstein asked Karp for updates and wrote that “my guy had it right from day one” ⁵. Karp replied while returning from Tokyo, “Your guy totally had it right” ³⁵. On January 24, 2019, Epstein offered to bring Karp up to date on “google. ghosen SIC and ...,” and Karp agreed before Epstein supplied a French telephone number ³⁷. On January 26, Epstein called Ghosn “a very very not good guy,” and Karp replied “Indeed” ⁸⁹.

Tom Pritzker is the only named, temporally proximate upstream-source candidate located in the November 30 sequence, but his preserved response contains no substantive Ghosn information and does not prove that he was Epstein's later “my guy” ⁵. The January 2019 context favors “Senate Intelligence Committee” as the meaning of “SIC” and treats it as a separate update topic from Ghosn, although the acronym is never explicitly expanded in the released messages ¹⁰. The French telephone number supplied after the January 24 exchange does not by itself identify a caller, source, meeting, or Ghosn-related purpose ⁷.

In the same January 26 exchange, Epstein asked whether Karp represented Rajeev Misra, an executive associated with SoftBank, and Karp replied, “Sort of. Spoke to him yesterday” ¹¹¹²¹³. The released message does not tie the Misra question to Ghosn, so it is logged as an adjacent contact rather than evidence about the source or use of Ghosn information ¹¹.

The surviving Ghosn messages establish episodic, matter-centered contact between Karp and Epstein ⁶. They do not show whether the offered information was public, privileged, accurate, client-authorized, relayed to Ghosn's defense team, or used in later advocacy or litigation ³⁶.