Democrats begin leaking names from redacted Epstein files
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2026/10/09/democrats-leak-names-from-redacted-epstein-files/
Democrats begin leaking names from redacted Epstein files
Leon Botstein, who resigned from college post, believed to be the first person mentioned on a list of many associates of late paedophile
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 to the 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.
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”.
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”.
In May, the Swiss-born conductor and musicologist stepped down as the president of Bard College after an inquiry into his links to Epstein, which was commissioned by the university.
Brandon Weber, the chairman of Bard College’s board of trustees, said on Wednesday that he had since received additional confirmation from Mr Raskin about the depth of those ties.
There are nearly 1,000 emails mentioning Mr Botstein in the Epstein files, released by the US department of justice, many of which hint at a close friendship.
The woman alleged to have been discussed in the May 2014 email was a foreign model whom Epstein lured into his orbit with offers to help her attend school and develop a career in the US.
But instead of assisting her in achieving her ambitions, Epstein pressured her to take sex education and massage courses while also sexually abusing her, members of the House judiciary committee alleged.
“By all appearances, Epstein was trafficking this young woman across state and international lines by mid-2014,” the Democrats said in their letter.
Over the past few months, a separate group of US politicians on the House oversight committee has invited a series of Epstein’s close associates to provide closed-door testimony to Congress.
Among the seven people asked to testify were Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire, Bill Clinton, the former US president, and Leon Black, the co-founder of the Apollo Global Management investment firm.
