Jeffery Epstein Met with Reid Hoffman, Larry Summers and Woody Allen | Hacker News Reader

Jeffery Epstein Met with Reid Hoffman, Larry Summers and Woody Allen

wsj.com

52 pointswootland42 comments

Aside from being a pedophile, Jeffery Epstein was an incredibly wealthy man. He met with thousands of people. They weren't all pedophiles. That was part of his scam, to forge relationships with a lot of important people so they'd be less likely to believe the stories about his sexual predation. He banked social proof and used it to deflect scrutiny.

What about the famous persons who met with him after he was a convicted sex offender?

"Jeffrey Epstein Was a Sex Offender. The Powerful Welcomed Him Anyway." - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/13/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-...

This was before cancel culture, metoo and whatnot. People are a lot more sensitive now. He had served his sentence (even if in retrospect it was ridiculously light). The fact that so many different people associated with him is evidence that obviously it wasn't in any way culturally unacceptable at the time.

"I'm sorry, I cannot comment on the matter until it has been officially hushed up."

I'm pretty sure ostracizing sex criminals was common place before 2016.

Elite* social norms are different, not always in a good way. Consider the many illustrious defenders of Roman Polanski.

*I know this word gets overused but here it is apropos.

Or they (elite social norms) are just more public. It's easy to hate on public figures for their transgressions. If it's friends or family members, there's probably more nuance. But we judge looking in from the outside.

The guy was obviously super questionable in his business dealings, and an active sex offender - but I think that's in hindsight, and a lot of the dealings are more a question of people getting taken in by a professional confidence man than anything else.

I'm not saying everyone he met with was a shining star of virtue. Only that you can't assume they met with him to have sex with underage girls. He was still an incredibly wealthy man after his conviction, that didn't change.

Though if they'd wanted to have sex with underage girls, hanging out with a guy convicted of it who has a private island might be one way to go about it.

But the risk of getting caught would be very high.

Besides that the reputational risk of hanging out with convicted sex offenders is high enough that one should want not to do that.

> But the risk of getting caught would be very high.

Besides that the reputational risk of hanging out with convicted sex offenders is high enough that one should want not to do that.

I'd say the whole Epstein saga (not to mention this very thread) shows neither of these risks were very significant at all.

Yes, there's a real "conspiracy theory" vibe to all of this - I think it seems like people want to imply all these people are part of some kind of sex-ring or something, when there's an obvious and benign explanation for all of it. You can plausibly accuse many of the people who took meetings of being greedy, but that's about it. This is just people trying to score cheap political points.

The "Epstein list" is turning into conspiracy theory. It sounds like authorities only have full contact list. Which includes acquaintances, employees, and victims in addition to conspirators. The criminals aren't going to identify themselves, and the FBI is usually quiet until arrests.

Have you ever actually listened to any of the victim testimonies? For example, the ones which make it clear that it was essentially impossible to visit Epstein's island in the Caribbean (as Reid Hoffman did) without it being completely obvious what was going on there? Even the locals who never visited referred to it as "Pedophile Island."

What was the point of the dinner Reid Hoffman organized with already-very-wealthy tech CEOs like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg? They already had access to far more money than Epstein could possibly have provided.

This shouldn't be downvoted because it's 100% true. I also wonder why this submission was flagged? At first they just took it off the front page but I guess that was too suspicious so they "flagged" it later. There are plenty of other Reid Hoffman and Epstein stories on here. HN and Hoffman have many investments together so it doesn't surprise me, but it does show where the owners of this site fall.

It's also odd because this earlier article from the WSJ was never flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35762731

Indeed, the difference I can see is that the second article mentions Hoffman and the first doesn't reference any HN related people.

And just to confirm Reid Hoffman and YC's affilation: https://twitter.com/ycombinator/status/1656675146588110850

Non-customers were on his free tier and were simply acquaintances. It's likely that many didn't upgrade to his VIP (Very Important Pedo) tier.

One important thing is when the meetings took place. Epstein was convicted in 2008. It says a lot that they are willing to overlook it.

It sounds like the emails were 2013 to 2016.

Woody Allen seems to be the only sus guy in that list on the surface of it. lol. His name sticks out like a sore thumb.

As much as I have no sympathy for any of these billionaires and celebrities, Epstein's entire modus operandi was getting himself associated with as many of these people as possible to insulate himself.

So while yes, I think there is dirt on some of these people, just being associated with Epstein through way of a meeting, photo at an event, or invite, is not the loaded gun many want it to be.

The Summers connection described in the article is a little more than a chance meeting at an event. In addition to their earlier ties, the article says that he and Epstein met more than a dozen times after Epstein's conviction and prison stint. Summers reached out to Epstein to raise money for his wife's $1M online poetry nonprofit (LOL) and Epstein donated $110k. The nonprofit eventually donated a large amount to an anti-sex-trafficking organization to make up for taking the Epstein money, but the fact that they solicited the money after Epstein's conviction suggests that their backtracking was more for PR than for actual concern about his history.

I still don't understand where the money came from

1. Get fired from your job as a school teacher for having sex with students

2. ????

3. Profit!

Sometime there's a reference to "estate planning" or "tax planning", etc, but that doesn't seem like "buy an island" kind of money. (And I'm sure the wealth was exaggerated but still there was plenty of money)

Yeah, despite all of the publicity, the Epstein story is really still underreported.

The only publicly known and documented source of Epstein's wealth is gifts of stock and real estate from Les Wexner. Any claims to the effect he was some sort of legitimate "financier" (which is still the widespread perception) are completely unsupported by evidence, which would be abundantly available in the form of trading and other financial records.

He was limited partner at Bear-Stearns, and involved in a number of financial ventures so I think there’s more to it than just Wexner but given that this included at least one massive Ponzi scheme (Towers Financial Corporation) I think it’s very reasonable to question how many of those ventures involved scams or money laundering.

The SEC went hard after Steve Hoffenberg, Epstein's partner in crime at Towers, but somehow Epstein managed not to land in any legal trouble over it whatsoever. A truly charmed life.

Yeah, I’m not saying anything about his life looks innocent but rather than he had more opportunities to accumulate wealth than just Wexner. Some of those would have been perfect money laundering vehicles (e.g. I “invest” in your fund and don’t complain when the management fees are high) so it seems like there should still be an investigation into still living partners.

It’s entirely possible this is the more mundane “rich people taking care of their drinking buddy” corruption, too - there’s certainly tons of precedent for that.

https://archive.ph/4CyWK

>Woody Allen

I mean is anyone shocked that a known child abuser met with another?

"Death is a funny thing. Not funny haha like a Woody Allen movie, but funny weird like a Woody Allen marriage" - Norm McDonald

If the rich and famous guys who knew Epstein abused girls as he and Ghislaine Maxwell did, I would expect civil lawsuits and criminal prosecution. The lack of such suits suggests to me that Epstein's acquaintances did not offend as he did.

Or it suggests the victims have been silenced with a mix of out-of-court settlements and threats. Some victims have testified that Ghislaine Maxwell would explicitly and openly threaten their lives in the event they spoke with any authorities. Maria Farmer reported Epstein to the FBI in the 1990s and the investigation was spiked.

And apparently Noah Chomsky who says it's no one's business to ask why he met with mr. Epstein after Epstein was convicted as a sex offender.

Yeah huge L for chomsky, bummer always enjoyed his stuff even if I almost never agreed with it

I wish we could detach people from their work.

I was/am abrasive unfortunately, I'm working on it, but I still suck. I especially cannot handle when people give false knowledge, I will make a fool of myself if I see someone lying or misleading.

I also run a popular website, specifically educating people on a niche field of education. I've seen people write off all the data collected and conclusions because of my personal behavior. I don't even disagree about my personal behavior. Just leave my scientific contributions out of it.

I will be dead and people will be reading my conclusions, while I'm alive, it seems to always come up(in online discussions).

Chomsky's work really isn't all that great though. His work on linguistics has essentially been revealed as nonsense and his political analysis is firmly in the realm of the "compatible left": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35764773

It's unfortunately an unwinnable situation, from an external perspective.

You shouldn't have to defend yourself by explaining personal details of your life just because you once met with a wealthy businessman who turned out to be a criminal, especially one who made a point of making as many connections as possible, and especially considering that people will furiously point the finger at you if you even so much as smell like you might be one of their political enemies.

On the other hand, that's also a convenient excuse if you really did happen to collude in his crime.

These people were associating closely with a known predator.

They don't get to play it off as innocent mistake.

They empowered him.

Lie with pigs...they are either pedophiles or pedophile enablers. Some got bacon, these rest are covered in mud, as they deserve to be.

> who turned out to be a criminal

Who was already a convicted criminal, and was very visibly using his networks to defend himself against that conviction.

Given that MIT received a large donation from Eppstein, it wouldn't be too surprising that Chomsky, an MIT employee, had a meeting with him.

Given Chomsky's current age, I think it would be unfortunate and unprofitable to question him. He does not have the same vitality and lucidity now as he did when he was interviewing Foucault.

If you want to know more about Eppstein, you should go to Joichi Ito.

If Epstein had such a connection with such a big man in so many fields, Melinda Gates wouldn't have had to divorce Bill Gates because of his relationship with Epstein.

Why is this all coming out now?

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