Thousands of pages of newly released correspondence linked to Jeffrey Epstein have shed further light on the late financier’s ties to leading scientists and academic institutions, as well as on his long-standing contacts with political figures including former US president Donald Trump and Britain’s Prince Andrew.
The material, published by a committee of the US House of Representatives, includes roughly 20,000 pages of emails and related documents from a wider cache of more than 33,000 records supplied by the Department of Justice.
The emails confirm that many prominent researchers continued to engage with Epstein after his 2008 conviction for offences involving a minor. They also illustrate how his money and personal patronage were used to cultivate influence at institutions such as Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A 2019 analysis in Science estimated that Epstein’s donations to scientific work “were unlikely to have exceeded a few tens of millions of dollars”, yet they were targeted at high-profile programmes and individuals.
Among the most high-profile names in the correspondence is Noam Chomsky, the linguist and political commentator who taught for decades at MIT. Emails reported by Scientific American show that Epstein remained in contact with Chomsky well after the 2008 conviction, including a 2015 message inviting him once again to use Epstein’s New York apartment or to visit his property in New Mexico. The Wall Street Journal had earlier highlighted financial links between Epstein and Chomsky, including payments facilitated via Epstein-connected entities.
In public statements on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Chomsky has described the attack as a “crime” while consistently arguing that NATO expansion contributed to the crisis and that Ukraine should adopt a neutral status between Russia and the West. In an interview with the New Statesman he appeared to accept a characterisation of Russia’s conduct in Ukraine as “more humane” than the US-led campaign in Iraq, a remark that drew extensive criticism. He has also warned that large-scale Western arms supplies risk escalation, and has opposed broad sanctions that primarily affect the wider Russian population.
Another prominent figure in the new material is Lawrence Krauss, the theoretical physicist and science populariser known for his work on cosmology and for the book The Physics of Star Trek. Epstein was a donor to the Origins Project at Arizona State University, which Krauss then led, and the files include more than 50 emails between the two men. In a notable 2018 exchange, Krauss sought Epstein’s advice on how to respond to allegations of sexual misconduct under investigation at the university; Epstein suggested that he should play down the claims as “ludicrous”, according to Scientific American. Krauss has denied wrongdoing, but he was removed from the advisory board of Scientific American that year following the allegations.
Harvard mathematician and biologist Martin Nowak, a leading specialist in evolutionary dynamics, also appears in the cache. Epstein gave $6.5 million in 2003 to establish Harvard’s Programme for Evolutionary Dynamics under Nowak’s direction, part of a total of about $9.1 million in gifts to the university before 2008.Harvard University+1 A subsequent Harvard review found that Nowak had given Epstein a personal office and key-card access at the programme’s premises, which Epstein used more than 40 times between 2010 and 2018, despite his status as a convicted sex offender. Harvard later closed the programme and imposed sanctions on Nowak; those restrictions were lifted in 2023, and he remains on the faculty.
Joi Ito, the former director of the MIT Media Lab, is another regular correspondent. Previous investigations showed that Epstein channelled at least $525,000 to the lab and invested around $1.2 million in Ito’s private investment funds. MIT has acknowledged receiving about $850,000 in donations from Epstein between 2002 and 2017 and has apologised for accepting money from him after his conviction. Ito resigned from MIT and a range of other positions in 2019 after the extent of the relationship became public.
The documents also intersect with earlier reporting about the British physicist Stephen Hawking, who attended a 2006 scientific meeting hosted by Epstein in the US Virgin Islands and was photographed on Epstein’s private island, Little Saint James. There is no suggestion in the newly released material that Hawking, or any of the other scientists named, was involved in Epstein’s criminal activity. Congressional staff and media outlets reviewing the archive have likewise reported no direct evidence implicating these academic contacts in his sex-trafficking offences.
The files underline the extent to which Epstein used philanthropic funding to cultivate influence in specific areas of research. Historian of science Naomi Oreskes has argued that his gifts at Harvard, and his interest in the genetic basis of human behaviour and related ideas associated with eugenics, illustrate how wealthy donors can distort scientific agendas by steering resources towards topics they favour. She wrote in 2020 that the “Epstein affair” revealed a broader problem: the integrity of research is placed at risk when individuals with the means to pay can effectively choose which subjects are studied.
Politically, the new disclosures have added to scrutiny of Epstein’s contacts with senior figures. Emails released by House Republicans show Epstein offering to help Russian officials “understand Trump” and referring to discussions with Moscow’s ambassador to the United Nations, in an apparent attempt to arrange a meeting with foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. A White House spokesperson said the messages “prove literally nothing” and accused opponents of using selective excerpts to smear the president. Prosecutors have not brought any charges against Trump in connection with the Epstein case, and recent reporting on Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir confirms that it does not contain abuse allegations against him. There is currently no documentary evidence that Trump visited Epstein’s island, despite earlier claims to that effect in some commentary.
The Epstein archive also intersects with the long-running controversy surrounding Prince Andrew. Giuffre has alleged that she was trafficked to the then-Duke of York when she was a minor; Andrew has consistently denied the allegations. The civil claim was settled out of court in 2022 without any admission of liability, and Giuffre has since detailed her account of the abuse in a memoir published after her death by suicide in April 2025. Following the settlement and continuing public criticism, King Charles III removed Andrew from royal duties and stripped him of his remaining military and royal patronages.
The latest release comes amid a political drive in Washington to force full disclosure of federal files on Epstein’s activities, through legislation that would compel the Justice Department to release further material. For the scientific community, the documents revive an uncomfortable question already posed by earlier investigations: how far universities and researchers should go in accepting money from controversial donors, and what safeguards are needed to prevent such relationships from shaping research in ways that are not in the public interest.
