The Wall Street Journal dropped a big story on Sunday.
We’ve been waiting to hear the other shoe to drop on the prominent names who were connected to Jeffrey Epstein for years now. We’ve known some of them like Bill Clinton who flew with Epstein many times on his plane. We’ve reported on some of the names and people involved in the past.
Now there’s more, courtesy of Epstein’s private calendar which had his schedules. These names hadn’t come out before. The WSJ is revealing the identities of prominent people who met with Epstein even after he was convicted on charges of solicitation, including soliciting a minor, and became a registered sex offender. A lot of information came out after he was publicly accused of sexually abusing girls in 2006. Politicians even cut ties with him and returned donations. Then came the plea deal in 2008. Yet all these meetings/alleged meetings occurred after that. Epstein was still feted all over town and running with the famous and the wealthy.
Among the people named in the story, there was the current CIA director, a college president, a famous professor, and an official who served in the Obama administration. The WSJ is saying they cannot confirm that every scheduled meeting took place.
William Burns, the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency, had three meetings scheduled with Epstein in 2014 when he was Deputy Secretary of State. According to the WSJ, they first met in Washington and then Burns visited Epstein’s townhouse in Manhattan.
Then there was Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, who is now Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel. She had “dozens” of meetings with Epstein after she worked in the White House. According to his calendar schedules, she was supposed to join a trip to Paris in 2015 and a visit to his private island in 2017.
Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, invited Epstein to the campus and Epstein brought along a group of young females. Leftist political activist Noam Chomsky while he was a professor at MIT also met with him.
The WSJ tried to get answers from these people as to the nature of their relationships with Epstein.
Burn’s spokesperson tried to distance him from the late financier.
“The director did not know anything about him, other than that he was introduced as an expert in the financial services sector and offered general advice on the transition to the private sector,” CIA spokeswoman Tammy Kupperman Thorp said. “They had no relationship.”
He had meetings with him when he was a Deputy Secretary of State in 2014 preparing to go back into the private sector. According to the Epstein schedules, Burns had two evening meetings with him at his townhouse and his driver was to take him to the airport. Burns acknowledges meeting him once “briefly.” Thorp says he does not remember any other contact including any ride to the airport. Burns left the State Department, became the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and worked there until he went back to government as CIA Director under Biden.
Epstein seemed to go out of his way for Ruemmler, getting her avocado sushi rolls and “visiting apartments she was considering buying.” He even tried to get an airplane flight of hers upgraded to first class. After she left the White House in June 2014, he planned a lunch for her in August to introduce her to his friends.
Goldman Sachs said Ruemmeler just had a “professional relationship” with him because of her job with Latham and Watkins at the time, and that she didn’t travel with him. Epstein introduced her to potential legal clients, such as Bill Gates.
Latham and Watkins said that Epstein was not a client of the firm and Bill Gates’ spokesperson said that Epstein didn’t work for him, misrepresented the relationship and that he regrets ever meeting him (the common talking point response from people).
The Goldman Sachs spokesperson did acknowledge that Epstein invited her to meetings and social gatherings but denies she ever flew with him on the plane anywhere.
Epstein introduced Ruemmeler to Ariane de Rothschild, who is now the head of a Swiss private bank Edmond de Rothschild Group, and married into the famous Rothschild family. Epstein had a dozen meetings with her as well. In 2019, the bank denied she ever met with Epstein. Now they are acknowledging that she did meet with him as part of her duties at the bank but she knew nothing about his crimes.
Botstein, the Bard president, said that he was trying to hit up Epstein for donations to the school and that the relationship was “a little bit of sadism” with him “dangling philanthropic support.” He said they knew he was a convicted felon but believed in “rehabilitation.” Nevertheless, he said they had security around him when he was at the school.
Epstein also had many meetings with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak said they spoke about geopolitics. He met Epstein with Noam Chomsky in 2015.
Perhaps the most unique response to the question about Epstein was from Noam Chomsky. He sent an email, “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and that we met occasionally.” Alrighty now, could you wave a flag and give a worse answer? And this guy is supposed to be a professor? Not exactly an intelligent response; that response screams: there’s more to the story. So if you don’t want people to think that, why would you say it? Hence why “liberal” doesn’t equate to “bright.” Ultimately, he did acknowledge they spoke about politics and academic subjects.
Chomsky indicated he knew he’d been convicted but he’d served his sentence. In the U.S. he said, that equals a “clean slate.”
The calendar showed that Chomsky was supposed to have a meeting with Epstein, as well as Woody Allen and his wife Soon Yi-Previn in 2015. Chomsky said if there was a flight it would only have been “thirty minutes” from Boston to New York. “I am unaware of the principle that requires I inform you about an evening spent with a great artist.” The great artist who married the girl who was like a stepdaughter to him? That guy. Chomsky is certainly something else.
I’m sure we’ll find out more as more things come out from Epstein’s records. But what I find interesting about the responses so far is the desperate scramble to distance themselves.