New Delhi, July 19 -- PARIS - On the morning of February 7, 2026, Jack Lang walked away from the Arab World Institute, the cultural institution in Paris that he had helped build into a pillar of French soft power over two decades. The resignation was voluntary, he said. The timing made it harder to believe.

Days earlier, the United States Department of Justice had released a new tranche of the Epstein files. Inside the correspondence covering 2012 through 2019, Lang's name appeared 673 times.

Lang had spent nearly 20 years across multiple French governments as minister of culture and then education minister. He created France's annual Festival of Music, which draws millions each June. He had led the Arab World Institute since 2013, an i...