Jeffrey Epstein helped move $270,000 for renowned linguist Noam Chomsky and also paid $150,000 to Bard College president Leon Botstein, the Wall Street Journal has reported.
According to the newspaper, and also confirmed by Chomsky and Botstein, the late sex offender and financier had financial dealings with the two academics and had met with them multiple times.
Chomsky, a linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and political activist, told the Journal that he met Epstein occasionally to discuss political and academic topics. In 2018, Chomsky asked Epstein for help with a “technical matter” regarding the disbursement of common funds relating to his first marriage, the Journal reported.
He went on to confirm that in March 2018, he received a transfer of approximately $270,000 from an account linked to Epstein, telling the Journal that it was “restricted to rearrangement of my own funds, and did not involve one penny from Epstein”.
In response to further questions from the Guardian, Chomsky responded: “My late wife Carol and I were married for 60 years. We never bothered with financial details. She had a long debilitating illness when we paid no attention at all to such matters. Several years after her death, I had to sort some things out. I asked Epstein for advice. There were no financial transactions except from one account of mine to another.”
“These are all personal matters of no one’s concern,” Chomsky said.
Meanwhile, in 2016, Botstein received checks from an account linked to Epstein that amounted to approximately $150,000, the Swiss American conductor and Bard College president told the Journal.
Botstein told the Journal that Epstein had designated him as a consultant on the payments and made them appear as if they were fees for consulting work, which Botstein said he did not do for Epstein.
“I have no idea why he concocted this scheme … He didn’t want to write a check to Bard. He took pity on me, and he said, ‘I’m gonna give you money and you do whatever you want with it,’” Botstein told the Journal.
Botstein added that he included Epstein’s payments to him as part of a larger donation he made to the college in 2016.
Moreover, in 2011, Epstein gave Bard College $75,000 in unsolicited donations and Botstein had met with Epstein over a dozen times but was unsuccessful in raising additional funds, the president told the Journal.
In a statement to the Guardian, a spokesperson for the university confirmed the donations from Epstein.
“Jeffrey Epstein made an unsolicited $75,000 contribution to Bard in 2011 that the college publicly acknowledged in 2019. At the time of his gift to Bard, Epstein purported to be a billionaire philanthropist who had served a prison sentence for a deeply troubling crime,” the spokesperson said, referring to Epstein’s sex offenses.
In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to charges of soliciting prostitution from a minor and was registered as a sex offender. Eleven years later, in July 2019, federal prosecutors charged Epstein with sex trafficking a minor and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking. Epstein denied the charges and was refused bail before he died months later in an apparent suicide.
The spokesperson went on to explain that Epstein had expressed philanthropic interest in Bard’s music programs and introduced Botstein to Gratitude America, a discrete charity set up by Epstein which had an advisory board consisting of experts from various disciplines.
In 2016, Botstein was invited by the foundation’s president, Richard Khan, to serve a one-year term on the board as a music expert.
“Botstein received $150,000 in compensation, the entirety of which was included in his annual 2016 gift to Bard, along with personal savings and the rest of his non-Bard income from honoraria and outside conducting fees, a practice he has maintained for many years,” the spokesperson said.
“Botstein’s 2016 total philanthropic contribution to Bard was $1,040,000. Had the extent and horror of Epstein’s crimes been known, Bard would not have accepted his support,” the spokesperson added.
• This article was amended on 18 May 2023 to correct the year in which Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to charges of soliciting prostitution from a minor and was registered as a sex offender. It was 2008, not 2011 as an earlier version said.
