Democrats have begun naming associates of Jeffrey Epstein whose identities were redacted in official files.
Leon Botstein, a former president of Bard College in New York, resigned from his remaining academic posts on Wednesday after Jamie Raskin, a Democrat and senior member of the House judiciary committee, wrote a letter to the university linking him to several emails in the tranche of documents relating tothe Epstein investigation.
It included an email from May 2014 that was attributed to Mr Botstein, in which the author asked Epstein whether a young woman was "for me, or are you keeping her for yourself".
In the publicly available version of the file, Mr Botstein is not named. However, Democrats are privy to the unredacted version and Mr Raskin's letter said the email address used was "President@Bard.edu", at a time when Mr Botstein was president of the college.
The congressman alleged that the woman, referred to as Jane Doe in the letter, was being "groomed" at the time by Epstein, the paedophile billionaire who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
The letter to Bard College claimed that Mr Botstein "likely enabled and possibly even participated in" Epstein's abuse while he was serving as the president of the college.
Mr Botstein is believed to be the first figure on a list of many Epstein associates set to be named by Democrats on the House judiciary committee in a new effort for accountability.
Jamie Raskin, has been among members of the House judiciary committee to push for more names to be revealed from the Epstein Files - REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
Mr Raskin has written to the FBI expressing disappointment that it has insisted there is not enough evidence to investigate Epstein's alleged co-conspirators.
The senior Democrat said his team's review of the unredacted Epstein files "indicate the existence of possible co-conspirators clearly worthy of further investigation and potential prosecution".
He called on Kash Patel, the head of the FBI, to investigate Mr Botstein "and others" over their links to the late sex offender, and to unredact the names of all non-victims mentioned in the Epstein files.
"Congress should not have to continue to do your job for you," Mr Raskin said, adding that senior Democrats had "no confidence" that Mr Patel would pursue Epstein's close associates.
Mr Botstein denied any wrongdoing and said in a statement that "any assertion that I knew of or was involved in Epstein's criminal behaviour is wrong".
Leon Botstein, a professional conductor, has been accused of corresponding warmly with Epstein for years - Hiroyuki Ito/Getty Images
Mr Botstein added that he was nevertheless quitting his remaining Bard College positions because he did "not want to see even false allegations about me put the institution I have served for more than half a century put at any risk".
