> Chomsky said he participated in the meetings despite knowing Epstein was a convicted sex offender because he knew he had served his sentence and “according U.S. laws and norms, that yields a clean slate.”

I wonder if it’s also worth considering that a lot of people had no idea what Epstein had really been up to. I personally wouldn’t do business with a guy who served time for trying to prostitute a minor, though. I don’t think there’s a clean slate after that, or that a jail sentence would resolve issues in a person capable of that kind of behaviour.

I have no idea what their interactions were like or what the context was either. Who knows. I’ve certainly interacted with people I didn’t feel comfortable with at times, usually because circumstances made it difficult not to.