New Docs Show More High-Profile Officials Linked To Jeffrey Epstein: WSJ

Convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein had meetings planned with several high-profile officials, including the nation's spy chief and a former counsel for the Obama administration, according to a report.

A trove of documents, obtained and reported by The Wall Street Journal, included Epstein's private calendar. In the documents, it was shown that Epstein scheduled meetings with several prominent figures, including now-director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Willian Burns, Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, Bard College president Leon Botstein and Professor Noam Chomsky.

All the meetings were slated to take place in 2008 after Epstein was arrested on charges of solicitation, including a sex crime involving a minor. At the time, Epstein was accused of sexually abusing girls as young as 14 in Florida.

The outlet noted that there was no evidence of whether the meetings actually occurred. The documents also did not state what the purpose of these meetings was.

According to the report, Burns first met with Epstein in Washington D.C. in 2014 when he was still serving as the deputy secretary of state. He also traveled to Epstein's townhouse in New York. Despite their meetings, the CIA said Burns had no relationship with the convicted sex offender.

"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," a CIA spokeswoman told the publication.

According to the WSJ, Ruemmler had a more extensive relationship with Epstein, with both having met together dozens of times in the years between her tenure in the White House and her job as an attorney for Goldman Sachs. It said that Epstein introduced Ruemmler to potential clients, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. As per the documents, she was scheduled to fly with Epstein to Paris in 2015 and to his private island in the Caribbean in 2017. However, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs said Ruemmler never traveled with Epstein, according to the National Review.

Botstein, who has served as Bard College's president since 1975, said he met with Epstein in hopes of getting him to make a donation to the school.

Chomsky told the WSJ that he had met with Epstein only to discuss politics and academia. It was noted that Epstein had donated at least $850,000 to MIT between 2022 and 2017. Chomsky serves as a professor of linguistics emeritus at MIT. He later donated the funds from Epstein to organizations supporting victims of sexual abuse.