Epstein Data Wiki

MIT Media Lab

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tagsentity, academia, mit-media-lab, massachusetts-institute-of-technology, science-philanthropy, anonymous-giving
aliasesMIT Media Laboratory

34 min read

InstitutionThe MIT Media Lab, a research laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at 20 Ames Street and 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge; its gifts were recorded by MIT’s central Office of the Recording Secretary12
Giving found by the university’s own review$850,000 in ten donations between 2002 and 2017, of which nine came after the 2008 conviction: $525,000 to the Media Lab and $225,000 to a professor of mechanical engineering, according to press accounts of the January 2020 review34
What the Lab’s standing paperwork offered a donorIts template gift letter carries a bracketed optional sentence: “[Additionally, the donor wishes to remain anonymous and not included on any donor listings.]”5
What the Lab required before money movedA signed gift letter designating the funds unrestricted: “we need to receive the signed gift letter in order to allocate the funds correctly”; “MIT [w]ill need the gift letter to transfer the funds to Media Lab [a]ccounts”67
What the Lab’s development office arrangedIn May 2014 its Director of Development and Strategy wrote that a donor would be assigned to two named staff, “will not be contacted by anyone else”, and that “We can make it anonymous easily”8
How MIT’s central gift office recorded a pledgeUnder the subject line “LB’s anonymous $5M ple[d]ge to Media Lab”, November 20159
What that office said about a second fund, in another school”I note that past gifts have been recorded anonymously and we will continue to honor this [r]equest,” June 201710
What the university sent backIn February 2019 a $25,000 payment routed from another university was, in the Lab director’s words, “getting bounced by MIT back to ASU”11
Institutional responseIts director resigned in September 2019; MIT commissioned a fact-finding review by Goodwin Procter, released January 10, 2020; a professor was placed on paid leave; no discipline was announced for administrators; MIT said it would give $850,000 to abuse survivors1234

The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Between 2012 and 2019 it and the university’s central gift offices took, recorded and eventually refused money from Jeffrey Epstein, four years and more after his 2008 conviction. This page is about what those offices decided and where they wrote it down: what the Lab’s own paperwork offered a donor who did not want to be listed, which members of staff were permitted to approach him, how the pledge appeared in the university’s records, and what MIT did when the arrangement became public. The Lab’s director through that period, Joi Ito, has his own page; the acts recorded here are the institution’s.

One section below concerns a separate arrangement in a different MIT school. It is here because it ran through the same central office and because MIT’s own review treated both as one matter.

Some of the emails quoted here carry transmission damage in the print itself, an ”=” standing where a character was lost. Supplied characters are given in square brackets. One other change is made and is made throughout: where a passage quoted here itself contains quotation marks, they are rendered as single marks so as not to close the surrounding quotation. Apart from those two things, and apart from a bracket that a document carries itself where this page says so, nothing the print actually carries has been altered.

The Lab’s own gift paperwork

The Media Lab had a standing procedure for receiving a gift, and a member of its administrative staff operated it directly with Epstein and his accountant. On May 24, 2013 Epstein wrote to Ito: “lets start , I will give you 100k . to do as you please. could be a party for students. could be a competition, you choose . do we make the check to media lab or mit?” Ito replied the next day and turned the question over to the Lab: “Marissa, can you give Jeffrey and Richard the proper instructions to send the money?” On May 28 Marissa Wozniak, the Media Lab’s Contracts and IP Administrator, answered Epstein and Richard Kahn of HBRK Associates directly: “The check can be made out to MIT and sent to me at the address below. Additionally, we’ll need a letter designating these funds as an unrestricted gift. I have attached a template for this letter.”13

The instruction sheet that went with it is in the release. Headed “Instructions for giving a gift to the MIT Media Lab”, it asks for an electronic copy of the gift letter or notice of a wire to be sent to the Contracts and IP Administrator, directs that “Gift checks should be made out to MIT”, and gives a wire route whose destination is annotated “(MIT RSO Gift Receipts)”, for the Recording Secretary’s Office, with “MIT Media Lab” as the wire detail. The account and routing fields are blacked out and are not reproduced here.1

The template itself is also in the release, in a version dated April 1, 2017 and addressed to the Lab’s director. It is marked “DRAFT”, headed “[Please use company letterhead and sign]”, and leaves the donor and the sum as blanks: “In appreciation of the work being done at the MIT Media Lab, [donor name] would like to provide an unrestricted gift of $[amount] to support your ongoing research.” A further sentence is enclosed in square brackets, to be used or dropped: “[Additionally, the donor wishes to remain anonymous and not included on any donor listings.]”5 When the Lab’s administrator, by then writing as Marissa (Wozniak) Marcoux, sent that template to Ito on March 30, 2017 under the subject line “Re: Account for my research”, she described it in the same terms: “I’ve attached a template gift letter (including language to remain anonymous) and a doc with gift information. As usual we need to receive the signed gift letter in order to allocate the funds correctly. I can also create a gift invoice if that is needed for payment, please let me know.”6

The signed letter was not a formality. On December 27, 2014, with a gift outstanding, the same administrator wrote to a colleague, copying Barak Berkowitz, Ito and Peter Cohen: “I still haven’t received the gift letter for this gift - MIT [w]ill need the gift letter to transfer the funds to Media Lab [a]ccounts. Joi - do you want to follow up on the letter? An [e]lectronic copy is acceptable to MIT.” Ito forwarded that message to Epstein the same afternoon.7 Eleven months later the same administrator prepared paperwork of the same kind, writing to Ito and copying Barak Berkowitz and Peter Cohen: “Attached is a draft gift letter for the anonymous donation to suppor[t] Neri’s research.”14

Who at MIT was allowed to approach the donor

In a message forwarded to Epstein on May 15, 2014, Peter F. Cohen, Director of Development and Strategy at the MIT Media Lab, set out to Ito and to Signe Swenson an arrangement he said he had settled that day. It is the clearest statement in the release of what the Lab could offer a donor who preferred not to be seen:

All is good. Leon will be assigned to Richard and me. He will not be contacted by anyone else. He will get a short acknowledgement from Rafael thanking him, that’s all.

However, Richard needs to know if Leon wants to be an anonymous donor to MIT, or would want his name on a donor list. Can you ask Jeffrey to ask Leon that? We can make it anonymous easily, unless Leon would like the credit.

If Jeffrey tells you that Leon would like a little love from MIT, we can arrange that too, but right now no one will attempt to visit him, including the president.8

“Rafael” is L. Rafael Reif, then MIT’s president, who acknowledged in 2019 that he had signed a letter thanking Epstein for a donation in 2012.3 The donor named is Leon Black. Forwarding the message to Epstein, Ito wrote that he had “put Leon on a ‘do not contact’ list in MIT development”.8

Eight months later the question came back the other way, and the release carries the chain. On January 5, 2015 a Senior Director in MIT’s philanthropic partnerships office wrote to two colleagues, “Let’s consult with Peter on this.” Cohen’s answer, sent the same day to Ito and Swenson, was: “My assumption is that Leon Black does not wish to get inducted into any recognition societies (especially since his gift is anonymous). But, if you think he might enjoy it and want to ask him, he is eligible, apparently. If you agree with my assessment, I’ll just tell Richard that no recognition is the way to go.” Ito forwarded it to Epstein with three words, “Assume no, right?”; Epstein answered “no group anything”.15

What the Office of the Recording Secretary recorded

MIT’s central gift office carried the pledge under a designation that did not name the donor. On November 12, 2015 Maureen Moran, Manager of Gift Operations in the MIT Office of the Recording Secretary, wrote to Richard A MacMillan, Senior Director of Philanthropic Partnerships at MIT, under the subject line “LB’s anonymous $5M ple[d]ge to Media Lab”: “The anonymous pledge of $5M has a $1M payment due by the end of Decemb[e]r. Should a reminder be sent?”9

MacMillan put the question to the Lab’s director the same afternoon, and offered him a third option: “Leon Black will have a pledge payment due before the end [o]f the year; please let me know if you want us to handle this or if you [p]refer that we provide the template for this and you could customize. Or [i]f you want to handle privately — just let me know.” Ito forwarded that message to Epstein at 7:05 that evening, above the question “Hey Jeffrey. Do you have any information on the status of the [p]ledge?” The forwarded copy carries an attachment named “Anonymous Z-931 .pdf”.16

A pledge is not a payment, and in the correspondence the paper record appears not to agree on what was still owed. The instrument itself is in the release, and it resolves most of the disagreement.

The pledge is a letter on Leon Black’s own and his family foundation’s letterhead, dated December 2014 with the day left blank, addressed to Ito care of the Lab’s Contracts and IP Administrator, and headed “$5,000,000 Irrevocable Pledge to the MIT Media Lab (this ‘Pledge’)”. Its payment terms are explicit and they are the reverse of what the correspondence suggests: the donor “will fulfill this Pledge with an outright gift in the amount of Four Million Dollars ($4,000,000), which the Donor shall pay on the date hereof, and with an outright gift of the remaining balance of One Million Dollars ($1,000,000), which the Donor shall pay by not later than September 30, 2015 (the ‘Final Payment Date’)”. Payment is to be made by wire to an MIT account, with the wire detail “(MIT RSO Gift Receipts)” and “For the Sole Use and Benefit of the MIT Media Lab”, the same route the Lab’s own instruction sheet gives. The pledge is stated to bind not only the foundation but Black personally and “my estate, heirs, executors, administrators and personal representatives”, and to survive his death whether or not his will provides for it.1718

⚠ This copy leaves the day of the month blank in both its date line and its acceptance block, and its signature and countersignature lines carry typed name blocks with nothing above them in the extraction, which does not distinguish an unsigned copy from one the scan did not resolve. This page has not read it at the image and does not say whether this is the executed copy.18

Read against those terms, three of the four papers agree and one does not. MIT’s Office of the Recording Secretary described “a $1M payment due” in November 2015, and $1 million is the instrument’s remaining balance.9 Ito, on October 15, 2015, said the signed agreement “says that the money needs to be paid end of Sept. so it’s due”, and September 30, 2015 is the instrument’s Final Payment Date.19 A press account of MIT’s review reports that “one email indicated that Mr. Black had given the lab $4 million by wire transfer”, and $4 million is the sum the instrument makes payable on execution.3 The one paper that does not fit is the letter Ito quoted to Epstein that same afternoon, dated December 4, 2014, which describes $1 million as paid immediately and “the remaining $4 million” as due by December 31, 2015: the two sums transposed and a different final date.20 Whether that reflects a different instrument, an earlier draft, or a misreading is not established by the documents cited here, and none of them records that the $1 million balance was in fact paid.

The same office, a different school

The same central office had received a gift on a different leg of the university, handled by different staff, for a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, in June 2012: three years and five months before the pledge the Recording Secretary’s Office recorded above, and five years before this professor’s next gift, in 2017. It is set out here because MIT’s own review of 2020 treated it as part of the same matter, and because the recording decision was made by the same office.

On June 22, 2012 Kahn wrote to MIT: “I am Jeffrey’s accountant and would like to inform you of the following: Jeffrey Epstein intends to make a gift in the amount of $100,000 in two tranches of $50,000 for the discretionary research for the support of Seth Lloyd. The first $50,000 will be sent next week. Please confirm the address to send to and exact payee information.” Deborah J. Cohen, Senior Development Officer in the MIT School of Engineering, replied two days later: “Many thanks for your message on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein; we look forward to receiving the first installment of his gift. If you are sending a check, it should be made payable to MIT (or Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and sent with a note indicating that it is for discretionary support of Seth Lloyd’s research. For planning and recording purposes, it would also be helpful to know when the second $50,000 is expected.” The address she gave was that of the Associate Recording Secretary at the MIT Office of the Recording Secretary.2

Cohen had already decided how the money would enter the university. On June 21 she wrote to Epstein’s office: “I’m making an executive decision, and having you send the note and check to me, so that I can let Seth and the department know at the same time we put it through the Recording Secretary’s Office. Note should include purpose and pledge plan (e.g., ‘Enclosed please find the first of two $50,000 payments toward a pledge/gift of $100,000 for discretionary research support of Professor Seth Lloyd. I expect to make the second payment on or before [date].’”21 The square brackets around the word date are the document’s own and not this page’s.21

A week before that, setting out what the Recording Secretary’s Office needed in order to open the account at all, she had written: “We need either a pledge form/e-mail or $ to be able to establish this fund and add it to the Gift system and SAP.” She asked for the donor’s written commitment, and named as the person she expected it to come from not Epstein but his executive assistant, Lesley Groff: “Kathy needs either an email from Lesley (you may have?) saying she intends to make the gift(s), or Kathy can provide a pledge agreement form (it’s brief), for Lesley to complete.” On the preceding page of the same thread, Seth Lloyd had just forwarded that request to Groff with his own reading of it: “It looks to me from the email below that you should send an email to Kathy (Deborah — can you supply) saying that Jeffrey wants to donate the money.”22 A forwarding note carries that message on at 8:44 that evening, under the subject “Fwd: fund”, and reads: “Let me know what you think. I am not making the gift.”23 ⚠ The sender and recipient fields on the only sheet in the release that carries that sentence are withheld, and this page does not supply them from the surrounding thread. What the note establishes on its own terms is that whoever forwarded Cohen’s request that evening disclaimed making the gift.23 Cohen nonetheless asked for a name for the fund and proposed one: “Seth, for the name and fund purpose, here’s a suggestion, which you may want to edit, and/or run by the donor: ‘Lesley Groff Fund, to provide discretionary research support to Prof. Seth Lloyd in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.’”22 Nothing cited here records a reply to that suggestion, or under what name the fund was opened; the proposed name appears on seven pages of the release, every one of them the same message carried forward in a quoted reply, and none of them an answer to it.24 Six days later, when Groff told Cohen the check and paperwork were on their way, Cohen wrote back that it could travel in the same envelope as “a ‘conventional’ letter from Jeffrey,” a standard donor letter in Epstein’s own name, not Groff’s.25 By June 2017 the university’s gift office was directing communications about gifts for that professor to a fund it called the Lloyd Research Support Fund.10

The other date on this leg is 2017. On June 1 that year Epstein instructed Kahn: “send 125 k to mit for [S]eth lloyd from gratitude”. Kahn asked MIT for wiring instructions, and Linda Mar, Associate Director of Fund Information in the MIT Office of the Recording Secretary, replied: “I would be [p]leased to assist you in the generous gift to support Professor [L]loyd,” gave the office’s address and a link to MIT’s public wire-transfer page, and added: “Please [r]eference the Lloyd Research Support Fund … on any communications [r]egarding the gift. I note that past gifts have been recorded anonymously and we will continue to honor this [r]equest.” That afternoon she wrote again: “I am pleased [t]o confirm we have received the wire. We will credit the gift to [P]rofessor Lloyd’s account. Thank you for [y]our support of MIT.”10

In the same thread the professor gave his own reason for routing the money as a gift to the university: “P.S. the reason for doing this [v]ia MIT as a gift is to minimize the fraction taken by MIT and by Uncle [S]am. I did some research: this route [w]ill save about 30%.”10

Press accounts of MIT’s 2020 review report that it found this professor “purposefully failed” to inform the university of multiple donations from Epstein, that he had received two $50,000 donations in 2012 and $125,000 in 2017, and that he had also received $60,000 in 2005 or 2006 which he acknowledged depositing into a personal bank account without notifying MIT. He was placed on paid leave and, board members said, faced the standard faculty disciplinary process. Asked for comment when the report was published, he said by email that he could not comment at that moment but planned to later that week.34

The payment MIT sent back

On February 28, 2019 the arrangement met a refusal. Ito wrote to Epstein: “Hey Jeffrey. How are things? Just to let you know. We were able to keep the Leon Black money, but the [$]25K from your foundation is getting bounced by MIT back to ASU. Sorry…” Epstein answered, “No problem- Trying to get more black for you”. The thread’s subject line is “$25K from ASU”.11 Press accounts of MIT’s 2020 review report that the Media Lab rejected a $25,000 gift from Epstein in 2019 as he attracted more media attention.4

The subject line’s reference to ASU is not explained anywhere in that thread, and the release supplies the connection. At the same period as the MIT pledge, the same donor made a second irrevocable pledge on the same letterhead and in the same form, of $2,000,000 to the ASU Origins Project at Arizona State University, addressed to its director Lawrence M. Krauss and headed “$2,000,000 Irrevocable Pledge to the ASU Origins Project (this ‘Pledge’)”. One copy in the release carries no day in its December 2014 date line; another is dated January 22, 2015 and marked “VIA EMAIL”.2627 Both sit in Epstein’s files alongside the MIT instrument. What the documents cited here show is that the two university pledges were running in parallel through the same channel; they do not establish who drafted either, and no payment under the ASU pledge is recorded on this page.

The review MIT commissioned, and what it did

Ito resigned as director of the Media Lab in September 2019. A daily news summary held in the release, crediting reporting by Susan Svrluga, records that President Reif responded that weekend to allegations in the New Yorker that Ito and others had sought to conceal the source of money Epstein had donated; that Reif, in a letter to the campus, called the accusations “deeply disturbing” and announced that Ito had submitted his resignation as director of the Media Lab, professor and employee; and that he said an outside law firm would be hired to conduct a thorough review. The same summary records that Reif had apologised to Epstein’s victims in an earlier message to the campus, writing that the school had accepted about $800,000 of Epstein’s money over twenty years, with gifts to the MIT Media Lab and to a mechanical engineering professor.12

The firm was Goodwin Procter, and its report was released on January 10, 2020. Press accounts of it held in the release report that it found Epstein made ten donations to MIT between 2002 and 2017 totalling $850,000, beginning with $100,000 in 2002 to Marvin Minsky; that nine of the ten came after the 2008 conviction, $525,000 of it to the Media Lab and $225,000 to the professor of mechanical engineering; and that Epstein visited the MIT campus nine times between 2013 and 2017.34 Those figures close: $525,000 and $225,000 are $750,000, and the 2002 gift of $100,000 accounts for the balance of the $850,000 total. The professor’s share closes in the same way, since the two 2012 gifts of $50,000 and the 2017 gift of $125,000 are $225,000 exactly, which also places the $60,000 he acknowledged depositing into a personal account in 2005 or 2006 outside the figure the review attributes to him.28 They report that three current and former administrators learned of the donations to the Media Lab in 2013 and that, “in the absence of any M.I.T. policy regarding controversial gifts”, further donations were approved under “an informal framework” the administrators developed, an acceptance framework involving smaller, unpublicised donations, which the report found Epstein repeatedly ignored, and that he even claimed credit in 2014 for gifts he did not make.34 One of the accounts puts the administrators’ conduct more sharply than the other: it reports that the review found that while some of the president’s vice presidents knew about the donations “and tried to cover them up”, he did not; that two of those colleagues had left MIT several years earlier; and that the third, Israel Ruiz, executive vice president and treasurer, “previously announced that he is stepping down”. On that account the only one of the three still at the university when the report was published had already announced his departure before it landed.4

The same account records a solicitation that went the other way and failed. It reports that investigators determined that in 2016 the Lab’s director tried to enlist the chair of the MIT Corporation, the university’s governing board, to court Epstein as a donor, and that Epstein invited the chair to dinner but he declined.4 ⚠ The chair is named in that account and is described rather than named here, because the one act the record attributes to him is a refusal. What the page loses by that choice is the ability to connect the refusal to the named officer who made it.

It also reports a second claim of the same kind as the one about Gates. Epstein said in 2014 that he had arranged major donations to MIT from both Bill Gates and Leon Black, and the review found no evidence supporting either.4 ⚠ That sits beside the correspondence set out above, in which Ito routed his questions about the status of the Black pledge to Epstein and was answered by him. Being the channel through which a university chased a pledge is not the same thing as having arranged the gift, and the documents cited here do not establish that Epstein arranged it; what they show is that MIT’s director treated him as the person to ask. The report is reported to have found that senior administrators made “significant mistakes of judgment” but breached no university policy on controversial donors, because MIT had none; that President Reif was unaware the Media Lab was accepting the donations and “had no role in approving” them, and had not known who Epstein was when he signed the 2012 acknowledgement letter; and that Epstein’s claim to have arranged major donations to MIT from others was unsupported.34 Among those claims was one that in 2014 he had arranged an anonymous $2 million donation from Bill Gates; the reviewers wrote that “Representatives of Bill Gates have told us that Gates flatly denies that Epstein had anything to do with Gates’s donation.”29 MIT announced no disciplinary action for the administrators.3

Two members of the MIT Corporation, the university’s governing board, answered for the institution at a news conference. Alan G. Spoon said he found the campus-visit information “very disturbing” and that the board retained “full confidence” in Reif’s leadership. Denis A. Bovin said MIT allows its professors to invite whomever they wish to campus, but that this may change; the question, he said, was “where do you draw the line?”, and he suggested that the courts having deemed Epstein a Level-3 sex offender was a good place to start. MIT said it would review its donor policies with faculty, and Reif, underscoring recommendations from the Corporation’s executive committee, pledged guidelines on controversial donors, encouragement for whistle-blowers, measures to keep the campus safe from visitors who may pose a threat, and support for the Media Lab. In an all-campus memo he wrote that “if we can face the institute’s flaws with honesty and build on its great strengths, we can not only make our community stronger, more equitable, more inclusive and more effective, we can offer a model for deliberate self-assessment, growth and change.” MIT had earlier said it would donate a sum equal to Epstein’s giving to sexual abuse survivors, and said after the report that it was working with faculty to determine where the revised figure of $850,000 would go.4

Reid Hoffman, described in the same press account as a member of the Media Lab’s advisory board who took part in fundraising meetings at which Epstein was present, said in 2019: “By agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice. For this, I am deeply regretful”. He has said he vouched for Epstein because Ito told him Epstein had cleared MIT’s vetting process.29

What the record here does not settle

The Goodwin Procter report itself is not among the documents cited on this page, and it does not appear to be in the release at all: the firm’s name occurs on forty-five pages, and reading every one of them finds press accounts of the report, including further renderings of the three articles cited here, alongside law-firm directory listings and unrelated matters in which the firm acted as counsel. None is the report.30 Everything above about its findings therefore comes from press accounts of it held in the release. Those accounts give it different lengths, one calling it a 61-page report and the other a 63-page report.329 Counts of that kind commonly differ by whether a document’s cover and front matter are counted along with its numbered body; this page cannot confirm which convention either outlet used without the report itself, and does not treat the two figures as a conflict. One of the accounts, reporting the finding on the Gates donation, notes that MIT’s investigators “do not definitively say it did not happen — just that they didn’t see any evidence of it”, and quotes what it says is the wording of MIT’s own internal gift record, “Gates is making this gift at the recommendation of a friend of his who wishes to remain anonymous”, as reported by the New Yorker.29 That record is not itself among the documents cited here, and this page reports the sentence as press reporting of a document rather than as the document.

One of the accounts also records a gap in the report rather than in the release. It quotes the report as finding that in July 2016 the Lab’s director “sought advice from Reid Hoffman about whether to allow Epstein to attend a conference (perhaps the announcement of the Media Lab Directors’ Fellows) with ‘lots of people’ who may ‘see him and maybe know he’s involved,’” and then observes of the report’s authors: “What they don’t write is what Hoffman actually advised Ito.”29 That is an absence in the institution’s own review, reported by someone who had read it, and this page records it as such rather than attempting to fill it.

A search of the released files under the terms “Media Lab”, “MIT Media Lab”, “Massachusetts Institute of Technology” and “Recording Secretary”, and under the first two of those together with gift, donation and pledge, returned the correspondence described above but no gift letter actually signed by any donor, no MIT record of the $5 million pledge after November 2015, and no reply to the fund-naming suggestion of June 2012. No statement by MIT or by the Media Lab addressing these particular documents is recorded on this page.

Joi Ito; Harvard University and Jeffrey Epstein; Leon Black; Richard Kahn; Lesley Groff; Marvin Minsky; Martin Nowak; Bill Gates; HBRK Associates; Gratitude America; Enhanced Education; Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Footnotes

  1. “Instructions for giving a gift to the MIT Media Lab”, an undated one-page sheet in the release. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00583541 p.1. The account and routing fields and a telephone number are blacked out and are not reproduced here. ↩ ↩2

  2. The Senior Development Officer, MIT School of Engineering, to Richard Kahn, June 24, 2012, “Re: gift from Jeffrey Epstein in support of Seth Lloyd”; Kahn’s message of June 22, 2012 is on p.2 of the same document. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02166869 pp.1–2. Read at the page images. The image reads “tranches”; a duplicate copy’s machine text reads “trenches”. ↩ ↩2

  3. Tiffany Hsu, David Yaffe-Bellany and Marc Tracy, “Jeffrey Epstein Gave $850,000 to M.I.T., and Administrators Knew,” The New York Times, January 10, 2020, reproduced in full in the Southern District of New York daily news clips of that date. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00064817 pp.4–5. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10

  4. Colleen Flaherty, “More Epstein Fallout at MIT,” Inside Higher Ed, January 13, 2020, reproduced in full in the Southern District of New York daily news clips of that date. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00105378 pp.7–8. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11

  5. The Media Lab’s draft gift letter, dated April 1, 2017 and addressed to the Lab’s director. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00588965 p.1. A second copy is at https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00587061 p.1. ↩ ↩2

  6. The Media Lab’s Contracts and IP Administrator to Ito, March 30, 2017, “Re: Account for my research”, forwarded by Ito to Epstein on March 31 with attachments “Ito_gift_letter_template_3.30.17.doc” and “ML_Gift_Information_7.18.16.pdf”. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00678104 p.1. Read at the page image. ↩ ↩2

  7. The Media Lab’s Contracts and IP Administrator, December 27, 2014, “Re: Leon Black Gift”, forwarded to Epstein by Ito the same day. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02387382 p.1. Read at the page image. ↩ ↩2

  8. Peter F. Cohen, Director of Development and Strategy, MIT Media Lab, whose header is stamped May 16, 2014 at 24:27:48 +0900, forwarded to Epstein by Ito at 18:08 UTC on May 15, 2014 with Ito’s own covering line. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00989593 p.1. Read at the page image. A mobile number and an email address in the signature block are blacked out and are not reproduced here. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  9. The Manager of Gift Operations, MIT Office of the Recording Secretary, to the Senior Director of Philanthropic Partnerships at MIT, November 12, 2015, 12:11 p.m., inside the thread Ito forwarded to Epstein; Epstein’s reply, “send remindr”, is on p.1 of the same document. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02480763 p.2. Read at the page image. A telephone number in the signature block is blacked out and is not reproduced here. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  10. Richard Kahn to the Associate Director of Fund Information, MIT Office of the Recording Secretary, June 1, 2017, “Re: Funds to MIT”, carrying her confirmation of receipt at 2:49 p.m. on p.1, her earlier instructions on p.2, the professor’s messages of 11:07 and 11:17 a.m. on pp.2–3, and Epstein’s instruction of 9:20 a.m. on p.4. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02349247 pp.1–4. Read at the page images. A fund reference on p.2 is blacked out and is not reproduced here. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  11. Ito to Epstein, March 4, 2019, 4:09 p.m., subject “Re: $25K from ASU”, whose quoted block carries the exchange of February 28, 2019. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02631916 p.1. Read at the page image. ↩ ↩2

  12. A daily news-summary compilation held in the Southern District of New York clips, September 2019, whose item on the universities is credited to reporting by Susan Svrluga; the item begins on the first of these pages and continues on the second. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00044963 pp.928–929. This is a summary of press reporting rather than a published article, and no other page of this 1,000-page compilation is cited here. ↩ ↩2

  13. The Media Lab’s Contracts and IP Administrator to Epstein and Richard Kahn, May 28, 2013, with attachment “Gift letter template 2013.doc”; the quoted block carries Ito’s message of May 25 and Epstein’s of May 24, 2013. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01970634 p.1. Read at the page image. ↩

  14. The same administrator to Ito, November 4, 2015, “Gift letter draft”, inside a thread forwarded to Epstein the same day; Epstein’s reply, “of course”, is in the same document. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02482850 p.1. Read at the page image. ↩

  15. Cohen to Ito and a Media Lab colleague, January 5, 2015, inside Ito’s forward to Epstein of the same day, whose quoted block also carries the MIT philanthropic-partnerships message of that morning and Epstein’s reply. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00691072 p.1. Read at the page image. ↩

  16. The Senior Director of Philanthropic Partnerships at MIT to Ito, November 12, 2015, 1:53 p.m., forwarded by Ito to Epstein at 7:05 p.m. with attachment “Anonymous Z-931 .pdf”. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02671423 p.1. Read at the page image. A mobile number in the signature block is blacked out and is not reproduced here. ↩

  17. Leon D. Black and Leon Black Family Foundation, Inc., “$5,000,000 Irrevocable Pledge to the MIT Media Lab”, dated December 2014 with the day of the month left blank, addressed to Joi Ito as Director care of the Media Lab’s Contracts and IP Administrator: the consideration, the pledge and the payment terms. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00587173 p.1. The donor’s own street line on the letterhead, and the bank account and routing fields, are not reproduced here. ↩

  18. The same instrument, second page: the wire detail, the use clause, the clause binding the donor’s estate and representatives, the governing-law clause, and the signature and acceptance blocks. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00587173 p.2, which carries the Bates stamp of the following number; the run is filed under the first. ⚠ Not read at the page image: the day of the month is blank in the acceptance block and the extraction shows typed name blocks with nothing above them, which does not distinguish an unsigned copy from one the scan did not resolve. ↩ ↩2

  19. Ito to Epstein, “Fwd: Signed Leon D. Black agreement”, Oct. 15, 2015, 21:06 UTC, with attachment “Leon_Black_Family_Foundation_Inc._$5M.pdf”: “I found the receipt. This actually says that the money needs to be paid end of Sept. so it’s due.” https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00630999 p.1. Read at the page image. ↩

  20. Ito to Epstein, Oct. 15, 2015, 21:04 UTC, quoting a letter dated December 4, 2014: “$1 million will be paid immediately and the remaining $4 million will be paid by December 31, 2015.” https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00644750 p.1. Read at the page image. ↩

  21. The same officer, June 21, 2012, 11:09 a.m., inside a message forwarded within Epstein’s office the same afternoon. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02166013 p.1. Read at the page image. A cellphone number, a direct line and a fax number are blacked out and are not reproduced here. ↩ ↩2

  22. The same officer, June 15, 2012, inside a longer thread carrying the professor’s own message of 4:37 p.m. that day, quoted above, on the preceding page. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00410642 pp.3–4. Read at the page images. ↩ ↩2

  23. A forwarding note of June 15, 2012, 8:44:10 p.m., subject “Fwd: fund”, carrying the professor’s message of 4:37:19 p.m. that day: “Let me know what you think. I am not making the gift.” https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02167337 p.1. Read at the page image. The sender and recipient fields on this sheet are withheld and are not supplied here. The sentence quoted appears on this one sheet in the release and on no other, so there is no second rendering of it against which it could be screened for divergence; it is reported as this sheet prints it. ↩ ↩2

  24. Counted over the full-text index: the proposed fund name occurs on seven pages of the release. Reading all seven, each is the same message of June 15, 2012 carried forward inside a later reply, at successively deeper levels of quotation, across several renderings. None carries an answer to the suggestion. The count is of pages, not of documents, and it is a floor on the release rather than on the world. ↩

  25. Lesley Groff to Deborah J. Cohen, June 21, 2012, 1:52 p.m., “Re: fund,” telling Cohen the check and email were on their way. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00410613 p.1. Cohen’s reply the same day, 2:07 p.m.: “Thanks, that’s great! If easy on your end, since you are also sending a check, you can just send it with a ‘conventional’ letter from Jeffrey, in the same envelope.” https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00410618 p.1. Read at the page images. ↩

  26. Leon D. Black and Leon Black Family Foundation, Inc., “$2,000,000 Irrevocable Pledge to the ASU Origins Project”, addressed to Lawrence M. Krauss as Director, Arizona State University, dated December 2014 with the day left blank. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00587175 p.1. The donor’s street line is not reproduced here. ↩

  27. A further copy of the same ASU pledge, dated January 22, 2015 and marked “VIA EMAIL”. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00584059 pp.1-2. ⚠ Which of the two copies is the operative instrument is not established by the documents cited here, and the comparison drawn in the text is between the ASU pledge and the MIT pledge, not between these two copies of the ASU pledge. ↩

  28. The arithmetic is this page’s, on figures the press accounts themselves state: $525,000 + $225,000 = $750,000, and $750,000 + $100,000 = $850,000; $50,000 + $50,000 + $125,000 = $225,000. Neither account performs either sum, and neither describes the $60,000 of 2005 or 2006 as part of the $225,000. ↩

  29. Theodore Schleifer, “A new MIT report on Jeffrey Epstein raises questions about how much to blame billionaires like Bill Gates,” Recode, January 10, 2020, reproduced in the Southern District of New York daily news clips of January 13, 2020. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00105365 pp.3–5; the headline, outlet and byline are at the foot of p.3 and the article ends part-way down p.5, where the Inside Higher Ed piece cited above begins under its own headline, outlet, byline and date. This compilation carries both articles, so p.6 is Inside Higher Ed and not Recode. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  30. Counted over the full-text index and then read page by page: the firm’s name occurs on forty-five pages of the release across thirty-nine documents. The categories are press accounts of the January 2020 report, including further renderings of the three articles cited on this page; Law360 listings of law-firm names; and matters unrelated to MIT in which the firm appears as counsel. ⚠ This is a measurement of the released text, not of the world: it establishes that the report is not in what was released, not that no copy exists. ↩

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