“Reid has had only limited contact with Jeffrey Epstein, and it was always at the request of academics and in the context of academic fundraising,” a spokesman for Hoffman said.
Also at the dinner that night was Elon Musk, who introduced Epstein to Zuckerberg, according to Vanity Fair. Musk denied making the introduction. A Zuckerberg spokesman told the magazine that the Facebook chief and Epstein met only in passing and did not communicate again. Musk called Epstein “obviously a creep,” and said that while he and his ex-wife Talulah Riley visited Epstein’s Manhattan house several years ago “for about 30 minutes in the middle of the afternoon” as research for novel she was writing, they did not “see anything inappropriate at all, aside from weird art.”
Epstein also owns Little St. James, a private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he has entertained luminaries over the years. Branson’s Necker Island is nearby, and the billionaire appears in Epstein’s black book. “We believe that Jeffrey Epstein once attended a charity tennis tournament on Necker some years ago, but there has been no contact since then,” a spokeswoman for Branson said. “There is no personal or business relationship between the two, nor has there ever been.”
Epstein still worked connections to the tech set as recently as last year. Hadi Partovi, the technology entrepreneur who founded the education nonprofit Code.org, said on Twitter that he wasn’t familiar with the financier when somebody introduced them last summer. Partovi spoke with Epstein over video chat about a donation for Code.org. But as he researched Epstein, Partovi saw the previous conviction and decided not to proceed, he said.
“Fundraising is hard, and saying ‘no’ is even harder,” Partovi wrote on Twitter. “I’m glad I made this call.” Partovi went on to describe the complex moral judgment that comes with evaluating relationships with donors. He said his decision might have been different if a potential benefactor had been accused but not convicted. "It's not my role," he said, "to play judge or jury."
--With assistance from Dina Bass and Gerrit De Vynck.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.