Report: Epstecrazy tanda 8k8in met with now head of CIA, other prominent figures

CIA Director William Burns. Linguistics professor Noam Chomsky. Goldman Sachs lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler. Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. Filmmaker Woody Allen.

Those and other prominent figures from politics, finance, academia and the arts had meetings scheduled with financier Jeffrey Epstein several times after he had registered as a sex offender and served time in jail for abusing a 14-year-old girl in 2008, according to documents that show his schedules, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

The Journal said the documents include thousands of pages of emails and schedules from 2013 to 2017 and haven't been previously reported.

The newspaper said in an article on Sunday that it couldn't verify that all the meetings reportedly in Epstein's schedules had taken place, and the purpose of most of the meetings wasn't listed. Epstein was found dead in a New York City jail cell of an alleged suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex-trafficking charges.

In 2014, when current Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns was deputy secretary of state, he was reported scheduled to meet with Epstein three times. He was listed to first meet Epstein at the latter's Manhattan townhouse.

CIA spokesperson Tammy Kupperman Thorp denied Burns, 67, had any knowledge of Epstein's personal life at the time they met.

"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 transition to the private sector," she told the Journal. "They had no relationship."

After one meeting at the townhouse, Epstein apparently planned for his driver to take Burns to the airport. Though Burns recalled meeting Epstein briefly via a mutual friend in Washington, he denied the other meetings in the calendar.

"The director does not recall any further contact, including receiving a ride to the airport," Thorp told the Journal.

When asked whether he met with Epstein, Chomsky, an American linguist and political activist, told the Journal in a statement: "First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone's. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally."

Chomsky, the Journal said, met with Epstein on a number of occasions throughout 2015 and 2016. He told the Journal that he met with him to discuss politics and academia. One meeting was with Epstein and former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, whom the Journal said met with Epstein several times.

"He often brought other interesting persons, from art or culture, law or science, finance, diplomacy or philanthropy," Barak told the newspaper.

As part of another meeting, Epstein scheduled a flight for Chomsky, 94, to have dinner with filmmaker Woody Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn.

In response to meeting specifically with Epstein and Allen, Chomsky told the WSJ, "I'm unaware of the principle that requires that I inform you about an evening spent with a great artist."

Between 2002 and 2017, Epstein reportedly donated at least $850,000 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where Chomsky was a professor. MIT later claimed to have since donated the funds to charities that support victims of sexual abuse.

The Journal reported that Epstein and Bard College President Leo Botstein, 76, met more than two dozen times in four years, mostly at Epstein's Manhattan townhouse.

He told the newspaper after being named that he met with Epstein to secure funding for the school. He invited Epstein — who traveled with a group of "young female guests" — to the campus. On another occasion, Botstein met with Epstein to thank him for donating laptops to Bard.

At Epstein's home, Botstein was led to a dining room where they discussed classical music and other causes, he said. "He presented himself as a billionaire, a really, really rich person," he said. "I found him odd and arrogant. And what I finally came to believe, which is why we stopped contact with him, is that he was simply stringing us along."

Epstein never donated to Bard, although Botstein said that was his expectation from the meetings.

"I was an unsuccessful fundraiser and actually the object of a little bit of sadism on his part in dangling philanthropic support," Botstein told the WSJ. "That was my relationship with him.

"We looked him up, and he was a convicted felon for a sex crime," he said. "We believe in rehabilitation."

Ruemmler, a top Goldman Sachs lawyer, was at one point a White House counsel to President Barack Obama. Between joining Goldman Sachs and working at the White House, the Journal said Ruemmler met with Epstein "dozens of times''.

A Goldman Sachs representative said Epstein introduced Ruemmler to several potential clients, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

In his calendar, Epstein wrote that he was to meet Ruemmler in Paris in 2015 and on his private island in the Caribbean in 2017, the Journal said.

Ruemmler never visited his island and "never accepted an invitation or an opportunity to fly with Jeffrey Epstein anywhere", the Goldman spokesman said.

Ruemmler told the Journal that she and Epstein had a professional relationship and denied ever traveling with him. "I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein," she told the WSJ.

A Goldman Sachs representative said Epstein introduced Ruemmler to several potential clients, including Gates.