Arizona State:
every dollar came after the conviction

The comparison that frames this page.

Harvard’s $9.1 million all predates the conviction. Drew Faust barred him in 2008, and the university took nothing further. What failed there was everything other than the donor rule — the office, the fellowship, the introductions.

At Arizona State there was no rule to fail. The Origins Project was founded in 2008, the money began arriving in December 2010, and it continued until April 2017 — nine years after the guilty plea.

And the relationship was not passive. Krauss defended Epstein publicly in 2011, sent a reporter’s questions to Epstein for his approval, dismissed a protest by women at a conference over that defence, wrote a letter justifying Epstein’s physical presence on campus, and dined at his island with a former Israeli prime minister and a Harvard professor in 2016.

What the files add. Krauss appears in roughly 4,422 documents — placing him among Epstein’s most heavily documented academic contacts anywhere in the release.

What ASU says. After the Origins Project was shuttered in 2018, the university returned $25,000 to Enhanced Education and about $460,000 to the Blacks, at the donors’ request. A spokesperson said: “we believe we have been successful in closing all connections to Epstein and his affiliated entities.”

$2.25 million, nine donations, December 2010 to April 2017.

From Epstein directly. Approximately $250,000 through Enhanced Education, one of his foundations.

From the Blacks. $2 million in three separate personal gifts, 2014–2015 — $1.5 million from Leon Black in two donations, and $500,000 from Debra Black.

The pledge document. EFTA00584059 records a $2,000,000 irrevocable pledge from Leon Black to the ASU Origins Project, dated January 2015 and described as legally binding on his estate, heirs and executors. A further Black Foundation donation appears in EFTA00587175, December 2014.

The accounting entry that says the most. One Origins Project record lists Epstein’s employer as “Leon D. Black, Enhanced Education” — conflating the man, the billionaire and the foundation in a single field.

Why that matters. It is the clearest indication that, from inside the university, Epstein and Black were not experienced as separate donors. BuzzFeed’s assessment was that Epstein’s philanthropy is entangled with Black’s, and that the true total may be higher than foundation filings show.

The unwinding. $25,000 returned to Enhanced Education; roughly $460,000 returned to the Blacks. Both at the donors’ request rather than the university’s initiative.

EFTA00763822, February 2010. Epstein had been out of prison for months.

Krauss wrote to him proposing three things:

• That Epstein join the ASU Origins Project board
• That board meetings be held in St. Thomas — the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein’s island is
• That they use the ASU Foundation to “funnel money in private ways to do whatever we want”

Read the third item on its own. A university foundation is a charitable entity governed by state and federal rules. Proposing to use it to move money privately, to do whatever we want, is a proposal to use a public university’s charitable vehicle as a discretionary conduit.

This is the most explicit documented proposal of its kind anywhere in the academic record of this archive.

The MIT comparison. At MIT, the director proposed to “swap donations with someone else’s foundation” — a method for disguising a disqualified donor. That was concealment.

This is different in kind. It proposes the university’s own foundation as the instrument, and states the purpose as unrestricted.

What is not established. Whether the ASU Foundation was ever used that way, whether Epstein joined the board, or whether any board meeting took place in St. Thomas. None of that has been reported, and the proposal itself is what the document establishes.

The timing. February 2010 — months after his release, and ten months before the first donation arrived in December 2010.

Krauss did not merely take the money. He defended Epstein in public, and then sought Epstein’s approval for having done so.

The 2011 interview. Speaking to the Daily Beast after Epstein’s conviction, Krauss said:

“Jeffrey has surrounded himself with beautiful women and young women, but they’re not as young as the ones that were claimed.”

What that sentence does. It does not deny that young women were present. It disputes the ages — arguing about the degree of a documented offence rather than the fact of it.

Then he sent it to Epstein. The released emails show Krauss forwarding his correspondence with the Daily Beast reporter to Epstein, in what one Arizona outlet described as an uncomfortable plea for approval:

“Beyond anything else, you are my friend. I hope we can both always remember that, no matter what.”

The walkout. EFTA00656503. Krauss wrote to Epstein about a planned walkout at The Amazing Meeting by “female skeptics” upset at his defence of Epstein. His response to the protest:

“I have decoupled from worrying about it… will die down once they found something else to be upset about, Charlie Sheen mouthing off or whatever.”

Women were objecting, in public, to a scientist defending a convicted sex offender — and he described their objection to that offender as a passing irritation.

Epstein did not only fund the Origins Project. He attended it.

The 2014 gala. A dinner marking the project’s fifth anniversary, at which Epstein was photographed with Krauss and Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. Krauss later characterised Epstein to social-media critics as simply another donor he had happened to be photographed with.

The letter. The files indicate Krauss wrote a letter justifying Epstein’s physical presence at ASU — meaning the presence was questioned internally, and defended in writing.

The February 2017 workshop. Shahar Avin, a postdoctoral researcher at Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, recorded that Epstein appeared at an Origins Project event accompanied by two young women he described as “East European-looking.”

That was 2017 — nine years after the conviction, at a public university event, and the observation came from a visiting academic rather than from anyone at ASU.

The island dinner. EFTA00318013, September 2016, records a dinner featuring an “argument about existence of God with Ehud Barak and Lawrence Krauss and to see a new side of Martin Nowak.”

A former Israeli prime minister, an Arizona State physicist and a Harvard professor, dining together at the property of a registered sex offender, eight years after the conviction.

And earlier. Two years before joining ASU, Krauss organised a gravity conference funded by an Epstein foundation, held in the U.S. Virgin Islands — with a dinner on Epstein’s island.

His removal had nothing to do with Epstein.

February 2018. BuzzFeed News published allegations of sexual misconduct against Krauss. He responded with a nine-page statement calling it a “libelous story defaming me specifically” and disputing the allegations.

March 2018. ASU placed him on administrative leave and reopened an investigation into an incident at an Australian Skeptics Convention.

The finding. Based on interviews with the complainant and two eyewitnesses, ASU investigators concluded Krauss had “created an offensive environment for academic pursuits” and violated the university’s Code of Ethics.

August 2018 — removed as Origins Project director. May 2019 — resigned from ASU. He was also removed from Scientific American’s board of advisers in 2018.

What the Origins Project became. Shuttered in 2018, it lost its name and its remit moved under the ASU Interplanetary Initiative.

The connection this site documents elsewhere. In April 2018 — while under investigation — Krauss was corresponding with Epstein about it. Epstein wrote: “My friends in the White House HATE the title ix c--ts,” adding “Ironic but he might be your out.” Krauss replied: “Ironic indeed! But I will take it.”

The full Title IX exchange →

Krauss has not been charged with any offence and continues to dispute the misconduct findings. He relaunched the Origins Project as an independent foundation, which states it has received no donations from Epstein or his foundations.

Frank Wilczek. The Nobel laureate and ASU theoretical physicist was listed as a beneficiary on Epstein’s VI Foundation website. Wilczek denied ever receiving money from Epstein, and said he was not aware of the serious charges against him until quite recently.

Why that matters. Epstein’s foundations published names of scientists as beneficiaries — and at least one of those named says the claim was false. The same pattern appears at Harvard, where his foundation claimed a $35 million gift that was actually $6.5 million.

Listing a scientist as funded is itself a reputational technique, and it did not require the funding to be real.

Noam Chomsky. The released emails show Krauss telling Epstein that Chomsky would be in Phoenix, suggesting Epstein join them, and adding: “confidentially we are in discussions about maybe having him move to ASU… please that is really confidential.”

Chomsky instead took a quarter-time position at the University of Arizona in 2017, at a reported $62,500 a year, “all of which is funded by philanthropic donations.”

The coincidence the Arizona Agenda flagged. The University of Arizona received $50,000 from an Epstein foundation in 2017.

No document establishes any connection between that donation and Chomsky’s appointment, and this site does not assert one. It is recorded because both facts are documented and the timing has not been explained.

Chomsky corresponded with Epstein after the 2008 conviction, as did Krauss and Lawrence Summers.