Peggy Siegal
Peggy Siegal

The New York Times credits celebrity PR powerhouse Peggy Siegal with helping to rehab the image of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Described as NYC’s "most prominent professional hostess," the 71-year-old Siegal used her “gate-keeping powers to usher Mr. Epstein, a friend, into screenings and events,” reported the paper.

The unpaid relationship developed over the years with Epstein quizzing Siegal about films and other topics.

“I was a kind of plugged-in girl around town who knew a lot of people," she told the paper. “And I think that’s what he wanted from me, a kind of social goings-on about New York.”

The NYT showed a more aggressive side of Siegal in its Feb. 13, 2016 profile, where it branded her as “Hollywood’s secret weapon in New York.”

It called her “irrepressible, truncheon-blunt and forever pushing the boundaries between ‘no’ and ‘maybe.”'

Siegal “has employed sharp elbows and inexhaustible energy reservoirs to claim a unique social position in New York and the Hamptons: as a host for clubby, insider-only film screening and dinners for the influential, she stands at the crossroads of Hollywood power and New York society (or what’s left of it), functioning as a spin doctor, salonista, celebrity confidante and occasionally, bouncer.”