The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter toHarvardUniversity on Wednesday seeking information aboutthe Ivy League school’s ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Ina statement,committee Democrats said CongressmanJamie Raskin, the party’s ranking member on the panel, sent letters toHarvardandBard Collegeseeking the information in connection with the committee’s ongoing review of how Epstein “used his relationships with prominent universitiesto expand his sex trafficking operation.”
Evidence indicates Epstein “leveraged his relationships with universities and their faculty to traffic vulnerable young women and continually burnish his reputation and public image to avoid detection,” the statement said.
Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who graduated from both Harvard College and Harvard Law School, had previously sent similar letters to NYU and Columbia, the statement said.
“As you surely know, Jeffrey Epstein repeatedly cultivated and exploited his close connections to Harvard and various faculty networks both to lure victims into his vast sex trafficking operation and then to try to salvage and polish up his damaged reputation,” Raskin wrote in the eight-page letter to Harvard President Alan M. Garber.
Raskin noted that Harvard “investigated its links to Mr. Epstein twice, first in 2008 and then again in 2019. Both efforts were widely considered failures.”
Now it’s time to do better, he said.
“It is time for Harvard, like the rest of America, to come clean and engage in the comprehensive accounting that will allow us to learn from this nightmare, take appropriate legislative action, and make sure nothing like it ever happens again,” Raskin wrote.
He said the committee wants a slew of documentation dating back to 1998 by July 1.
The information being sought, Raskin wrote, includes all records, financial documents, and communications related to Epstein’s funding of research at Harvard and his personal relationships with faculty members; all records of donations made to Harvard faculty and programs involving Epstein; records relating to Epstein’s influence in the admissions office or recommendations made to faculty about admitting certain applicants; and all records involving Epstein and his donations to Harvard.
In November, Harvardsaidthe school was “conducting a review of information concerning individuals at Harvard included in the newly released Jeffrey Epstein documents to evaluate what actions may be warranted.”
That followed the damaging release of emails between Epsteinand former Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers, as well as others affiliated with the university.
In 2020, Harvardreleased a reporton Epstein’s two-decade-long relationship with the university and his role in delivering millions of dollars to faculty and programs.
That report found that Epstein had a personal office among university researchers, a dedicated phone line, an unusual visiting fellowship position, and the backing of several high-level faculty who urged administrators to take the financier’s money despite his record as a registered sex offender.
A Harvard spokesperson on Wednesday confirmed receipt of Raskin’s letter, and referred a reporter to two previous statements on its ongoing Epstein review and the 2020 report.
