Newly released files shed fresh light on the connection between Jeffrey Epstein and Lawrence Krauss, shown in 2018 at a press conference for the ‘Doomsday Clock’ in Washington.LEAH MILLIS/Reuters
A physicist who chairs the board of the Free Speech Union of Canada sought advice from Jeffrey Epstein on how to respond to allegations of sexual wrongdoing and, as recently as 2015, discussed visiting the disgraced financier’s private Caribbean island.
Correspondence between Mr. Epstein and Lawrence Krauss, a top-flight academic and major figure in the movement for scientific skepticism, is contained in a large number of files released this week by the U.S. House Oversight Committee.
The relationship between the two men has been known for many years, with Mr. Krauss publicly defending Mr. Epstein, an important source of funds used by the physicist to promote his work at the intersection of science and celebrity.
Jeffrey Epstein appears in Florida court in July, 2008.Uma Sanghvi/The Associated Press
But the files released this week have brought new exposure to Mr. Epstein’s connections with several people who are Canadian or work in Canada.
And they shed fresh light on the nature and duration of the connection between Mr. Krauss, found by his university to have groped a woman, and Mr. Epstein, the financier and powerful socialite who was first sentenced to prison in 2008 for solicitation of prostitution with a minor.
“Beyond anything else, you are my friend. I hope we can both always remember that, no matter what,” Mr. Krauss wrote Mr. Epstein three years later.
In late 2017, Mr. Krauss returned to that friend with a request. He had himself been accused of sexual misconduct − allegations he denies − and sent Mr. Epstein a copy of a draft response.
“Could use advice,” Mr. Krauss wrote in an e-mail.
Mr. Epstein’s typo-ridden answer: “did You have sex with her ). ? Condom? Did she take it? I wouldn’t respond.”
The following year, Mr. Krauss responded to an e-mail about a Women in the World Summit with a suggestion of his own: “Let’s do a men of the world conference,” he wrote Mr. Epstein.
“Kevin spacey
Bill Clinton
Al franken
Woody Allen”
Mr. Krauss was raised in Toronto and studied at Carleton University. He now lives in Canada, according to the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, which arranged a debate appearance he made at the Calgary Petroleum Club in late September. Over the past decade, Mr. Krauss’s writing has been published by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the National Post and The Globe and Mail.
“I have never hidden the fact that I knew Jeffrey Epstein and interacted with him on several occasions, usually to attend salons with interesting speakers, or scientific meetings,” Mr. Krauss said in a statement to The Globe and Mail. “During that time often discussed the world, science, and politics. Jeffrey had, I believe, similar relationships with numerous other well known scientists, because he was fascinated by science.”
Mr. Krauss said he “sought out advice from essentially everyone I knew when false allegations about me were circulated in the press in 2018. As should be noted, none of the communications with Epstein relate in any way to the horrendous crimes he was accused of in 2019. I was as shocked as the rest of the world when he was arrested.”
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As an academic, Mr. Krauss worked at Yale University, Case Western Reserve University and Arizona State University, where he was the inaugural director of the Origins Project, which probed the genesis of life and brought together prominent scientists.
Mr. Epstein, who was arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges, was a key backer of the project, with his foundation contributing US$250,000. Another US$2-million came from billionaire Leon Black and his wife, Debra, whom Mr. Epstein advised, BuzzFeed News reported in 2019. The project subsequently returned some of those funds.
In February, 2018, BuzzFeed published a lengthy investigation in which several people accused Mr. Krauss of sexual misconduct dating back to 2006. He denied all of the accusations, which he discussed by e-mail with Mr. Epstein.
“We didn’t have sex. Decided it wasn’t a good idea,” Mr. Krauss wrote on Dec. 12, 2017, in a message to Mr. Epstein about one of the allegations.
Nonetheless, in July, 2018, an investigation by Arizona State University’s Office of Equity and Inclusion determined that Mr. Krauss had, in a separate instance, grabbed a woman’s breast at a 2016 conference in violation of the school’s anti-harassment policy and code of ethics.
A protester holds a sign outside the U.S. Capitol in November. The House Oversight Committee released thousands of documents this week related to the Epstein case.SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
The university’s report on the incident, posted online by campus newspaper the Arizona State Press, said a woman at the conference in Melbourne alleged that, while taking a selfie with Mr. Krauss, he put his arm around her shoulder, groped her breast, and said “don’t post that to Facebook.”
Mr. Krauss maintained that he did not touch her breast or make the Facebook comment, and was putting his hand up to block a potential camera flash. The university’s investigators sided with the woman’s version of events, which the report noted was supported by two eyewitnesses.
Mr. Krauss was put on paid leave in March, 2018. In August, he tweeted that the university had decided not to renew his appointment as head of the Origins Project. He formally retired in May, 2019.
“I have never harassed or assaulted anyone and have most certainly not exhibited gender discrimination in my professional dealings at the University or elsewhere,” he wrote in a statement announcing his retirement.
Jerry Gonzalez, a spokesman for the university, said Mr. Krauss left the school while the review of his conduct was still going on. “Krauss’s actions were reviewed by the university as a personnel matter during his time as an employee. He chose to retire in 2018 while the review was in progress,” he wrote in an e-mail.
In the years since, Mr. Krauss has launched a podcast, become chair of the Free Speech Union of Canada, and joined as a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation, a Calgary-based think tank whose scholars include notable Canadian conservatives. In an e-mail Friday, the foundation said it had worked with Mr. Krauss after seeing his writing in Canadian newspapers.
“The Aristotle Foundation, which began public operations in 2023, was unaware of these allegations or his connection to Jeffrey Epstein,” said president Mark Milke. “Given the content of these e-mails released by Congress, Mr. Krauss will no longer be associated with the Foundation.”
The White House is accusing Democrats of selectively leaking emails from disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein to 'create a fake narrative' to smear U.S. President Donald Trump.
The Associated Press
In the documents released this week, the correspondence with Mr. Krauss continues into the year before Mr. Epstein’s second arrest in 2019.
In late August, 2018, Mr. Krauss asked for a seat on Mr. Epstein’s jet, complaining that an event in Germany was cancelled after the university determination of groping in Australia, which Mr. Krauss in an e-mail blamed on “the bitch” who made it public.
In February, 2018, the month BuzzFeed published its article with allegations of sexual misconduct, Mr. Krauss wrote to lament his situation: “I wonder if I will ever really recover.. I wish they would indict Trump or something right now... ”
The e-mails suggest a relationship whose friendly tone persisted in the face of mounting public allegations against Mr. Epstein.
In 2016, Mr. Epstein reached out to Mr. Krauss with a question. He had been meeting “with the trump peopl in palm,” he said, and had a question about climate change. Was the South Pole actually getting colder? “i would also like to know what groups prefer warming. canada?” Mr. Epstein asked. Mr. Krauss responded that “The west antarctic ice sheet is melting at an unprecedented rate.”
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A year before, the men had exchanged notes that suggested Mr. Krauss would visit Mr. Epstein’s Caribbean island. The physicist had previously arranged a visit for scientists to the island in 2006. In a September 2015 e-mail to Mr. Epstein, he expressed his eagerness “to see you down there.”
He described working to finish a book “so I can actually celebrate that as planned on the trip.”
Mr. Krauss is not the only Canadian to appear in Mr. Epstein’s correspondence.
Mr. Epstein also maintained ties with Mort Zuckerman, a Montreal-born media magnate who has owned The Atlantic, Fast Company and the New York Daily News. He is now editor-in-chief emeritus of U.S. News & World Report. In 2003, he and author Michael Wolff headed an unsuccessful bid to buy New York magazine, which counted Mr. Epstein and movie producer Harvey Weinstein as investors. The following year, Mr. Zuckerman and Mr. Epstein invested in the short-lived gossip magazine Radar.
Media magnate Mort Zuckerman in 2015.Mark Sagliocco/Getty Images
Mr. Zuckerman contributed to a book made in 2003 for Mr. Epstein’s 50th birthday. He was also reportedly one of the friends who remained in Mr. Epstein’s orbit after the financier’s 2008 conviction. For Mr. Epstein’s 63rd birthday in 2016, the New York Times reported, Mr. Zuckerman contributed another note. This one suggested that a meal at Mr. Epstein’s home should include anything that “would enhance Jeffrey’s sexual performance.”
The newly released Epstein correspondence includes several e-mails to Mr. Zuckerman, who did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2015, the year renewed allegations against him began to grow more serious, he sent two messages to Mr. Zuckerman. In one, Mr. Epstein defends his conduct, saying “jane doe 1 and 2, were local strippers, that would call all the time asking if they could do massages. .. they left message after message.” In another, he forwards a press statement from Alan Dershowitz responding to allegations about underaged girls at Mr. Epstein’s island in the Caribbean.
“time to publish this instead of the trite,” Mr. Epstein wrote Mr. Zuckerman.
Mr. Epstein’s connections to Canada also extended to a researcher at the Waterloo-based Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
In 2003, Lee Smolin, a theoretical physicist who has worked at the institute since 2001, contributed to Mr. Epstein’s 50th-birthday book, which was released in September by a congressional committee.
Mr. Smolin, in response to Globe questions this week, said he knew Mr. Epstein because the financier helped fund his research several years before Mr. Epstein’s first arrest. Mr. Smolin said he did not know anything about Mr. Epstein’s crimes until they became public.
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His birthday book contribution consists of a headshot of himself, a photograph of himself and several other people in a classroom with a blackboard, a photo of a blackboard covered in calculations and several pages of geometric figures.
The drawings are of spin foam models for quantum gravity done by colleagues, which was part of his research at the time, Mr. Smolin said.
He said he first met Mr. Epstein in the fall of 1999 at a dinner at Mr. Epstein’s New York City home to evaluate potential grant recipients. Mr. Smolin said he ultimately received a grant that was sufficiently large to pay for four postdoctoral students at Imperial College London, where he had a visiting position.
Mr. Epstein had a long history of funding scientific research, with a particular focus on physics.
“During the period I was funded from Jeffrey we had several meetings to discuss ideas about quantum physics. We had no discussions about his personal life. At one point I was invited to his private island and declined,” Mr. Smolin wrote. “I was shocked when the allegations first arose about Jeffrey’s reprehensible conduct.”
Mr. Smolin said he could not remember exactly when he last communicated with Mr. Epstein, but remembered seeing him at a 2003 TED Conference. Mr. Epstein was arrested for the first time in 2006.
Mr. Smolin said his funding from Mr. Epstein ended in 2001 when he moved to Waterloo to join the Perimeter Institute.
Mr. Krauss was restricted from the Perimeter Institute and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland over previous allegations of sexual misconduct, BuzzFeed has reported.
Bill Lubinger, Case Western’s associate vice-president of communications, sent The Globe a statement from the university that said it “cannot comment on personnel issues.” The Perimeter Institute did not respond to a request for comment.