N.F.L. Says It Will Look Into Steve Tisch’s Ties to Epstein

Recently released emails reveal that Jeffrey Epstein sought to connect Mr. Tisch, whose family is a part-owner of the New York Giants, with multiple women.

The National Football League said on Monday that it would look into the New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch’s involvement with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, after the connection between the two men was revealed in documents released by the Justice Department.

“We are going to look at all the facts, we are going to look at the context of those, we are going to try to understand that,” Roger Goodell, the league’s commissioner, said at a news conference in San Jose, Calif., days before the Super Bowl. Mr. Goodell, though, stopped short of saying the N.F.L. would open a formal investigation into Mr. Tisch’s actions at this point.

Mr. Tisch, 76, was one of the prominent new names made public in the millions of documents the Department of Justice made public on Friday in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

The documents showed the two men communicating frequently in 2013, with Mr. Epstein seeking to connect Mr. Tisch with multiple women. Their exchanges were often crude, with Mr. Epstein often describing women by their ethnicity or anatomy, and Mr. Tisch on more than one occasion using slang terms to ask if a woman Mr. Epstein wanted to connect him with was a sex worker.

The N.F.L., which waited three days before commenting on Mr. Tisch’s interactions with Mr. Epstein, finds itself in a not unfamiliar position of having to address questionable conduct of a team owner.

The league’s personal conduct policy covers both illegal activities and behaviors that may tarnish the reputation of the N.F.L., America’s largest and most popular professional sports league. Mr. Goodell suggested that the league was still fact-finding to determine if it would open an investigation into potential policy violations.

In the past, the league has responded cautiously to issues that involve the personal conduct of its team owners.

The league, for example, did not penalize Robert Kraft, the New England Patriots owner, in 2019 after he was charged with two misdemeanor counts of soliciting sex, part of a wide-ranging investigation into possible human trafficking in South Florida. Mr. Kraft challenged the charges, which were ultimately dropped.

Mr. Tisch said in a statement last Friday that he’d had a “brief association” with Mr. Epstein that he deeply regretted, and that the women they had discussed were adults. There is no indication in the files that any of the women Mr. Epstein sought to connect Mr. Tisch with were underage.

The Giants, one of the league’s most storied franchises despite their recent on-field struggles, must also grapple with Mr. Tisch’s ties to Mr. Epstein, but the team has not made any public statements about if or how it is addressing Mr. Tisch’s position with the organization.

Mr. Tisch, who has worked as a movie producer, is the representative for his family, which owns 45 percent of the team. He has served as the team’s chairman and executive vice president since 2005, after the death of his father, Preston Robert (Bob) Tisch, the president of Loews Corporation, who had purchased half the franchise in 1991. Both of his siblings are board members, and his brother, Jonathan, is also treasurer of the team.

The Tisches are a prominent New York family. Bob’s brother, Laurence, was chairman of CBS, which was part-owned by Loews and is a longtime broadcast partner of the N.F.L. Laurence Tisch’s granddaughter Jessica is New York City’s police commissioner

Steve Tisch’s footprint in N.F.L. circles is relatively light. The Giants co-owner and president John Mara, whose family bought the franchise in 1925, has been more involved in the day-to-day running of the team, though Mr. Tisch used his private plane to fly in the Giants’ new head coach, John Harbaugh, for his interview with the team.

In the past, team owners have been penalized by the league for bad behavior, though these instances involved either misconduct toward N.F.L. employees or a conviction.

The Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay was suspended for six games and fined $500,000 in 2014 after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of operating a vehicle while intoxicated. During his suspension, Mr. Irsay had to stay away from the team facilities, games and social media.

In 2021, the Washington football team — but not Daniel Snyder — was fined a record $10 million after an investigation showed that a toxic workplace culture, including numerous accounts of sexual harassment, had festered under Mr. Snyder’s ownership. Two years later, he sold the team for a record $6 billion.

Mr. Tisch’s relationship with Mr. Epstein appeared to begin with a breakfast meeting in the spring of 2013, according to the released emails. A mutual friend told Mr. Epstein that Mr. Tisch found him “fantastic and interesting” and sent him Mr. Tisch’s cellphone number.

Mr. Tisch met at least some of the women whom Mr. Epstein wanted to connect him with, according to emails between two of these women and Mr. Epstein that described their meetings with Mr. Tisch. In one exchange in April 2013, Mr. Tisch told Mr. Epstein that he had lunch with a friend of Mr. Epstein’s assistant after meeting her at Mr. Epstein’s house and asked for more information about her. Later that day, apparently in reference to the same person, Mr. Epstein told Mr. Tisch that “she is a little freaked by the age difference but go slow,” and that Mr. Epstein would try to persuade her not to return to Ukraine.

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