FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2019 The Boston Globe Nation/Region A
tion in 2008.”
The letter said that a former
Harvard faculty member, Ste-
phen Kosslyn, had designated
Epsteinasavisitingfellowin
the department of psychology
in 2005 and that the university
was “seeking to learn more
about the nature of that ap-
pointment.”
The majority of Epstein’s
Harvard contributions have
been spent, according to Ba-
cow, except for $186,000. The
university said it would donate
that money to nonprofits work-
ing to support victims of hu-
mantraffickingandsexualas-
sault. Harvard also said it
would be reviewing “how we
prevent these situations in the
future.”
At MIT, officials have hired
the Goodwin Procter law firm
to review the circumstances
surrounding Epstein’s dona-
tions, and Reif said the latest
revelations were uncovered by
the firm. He suggested that he
had been unaware of his own
involvementuntilthefirm
alerted him to it.
“The Goodwin Procter team
has found a copy of a standard
acknowledgment letter thank-
ing Jeffrey Epstein for a gift to
[professor] Seth Lloyd,” Reif
wrote. “I apparently signed this
letter on August 16, 2012,
about six weeks into my presi-
dency. Although I do not recall
it, it does bear my signature.”
Reif also noted, “Informa-
tion shared with us last night
also indicates that Epstein gifts
were discussed at at least one of
MIT’s regular senior team
meetings, and I was present.”
A New Yorker story last
weekend rocked the university
by revealing that Joi Ito, the
charismatic head of the Media
Lab, had solicited contribu-
tions from Epstein even after
Epstein was a convicted sex of-
fender, and had advised others
to record those funds as anony-
mous. Ito resigned on Saturday.
Earlier this week, the Globe
reported that top officials were
copied on Ito’s e-mails about
Epstein’s contributions. Now
Reif’s letter confirms a broader
institutional policy of accepting
Epstein’s money, even though
he was listed as disqualified in
MIT’s database, and obscuring
his name in internal records.
Reif wrote that in 2013, se-
nior members of his team
learned of Epstein’s gifts to the
Media Lab and spoke with Ito
about them.
“He asked for permission to
retain this initial gift, and
members of my senior team al-
lowed it,” Reif wrote. The prac-
tice of making sure that money
was recorded as anonymous
originated within Reif’s senior
leadership.
“Because the members of
my team involved believed it
was important that Epstein not
use gifts to MIT for publicity or
to enhance his own reputation,uMIT
Continued from Page Athey asked Joi to agree to make
clear to Epstein that he could
not put his name on them pub-
licly. These guidelines were
provided to and apparently fol-
lowed by the Media Lab,” Reif
wrote.
The statement by Reif, who
served as the university’s pro-
vost before becoming president
in 2012, that he was unaware of
his own administration’s
knowledge of Epstein’s gifts has
strained the credulity of some
students and critics.
“I guess it’s technically pos-
sible to forget about something
like that,” said Alonso Espinosa
Dominguez, a senior math ma-
jor at MIT who is helping to or-
ganize a rally Friday afternoon
to protest the university’s ties
with Epstein. But, he said, “Af-
ter several weeks of dealing
with this controversy, you
would think that he would have
realized by now something as
basic as that.”
“He also seemed to have
needed the help of this inde-
pendent investigator to remind
him that his senior team knew
about Joi Ito’s involvement
with Epstein and had approved
it,” Dominguez said.
Members of MIT Students
Against War and No Dark Mon-
ey at MIT, two groups that are
hosting Friday’s rally, are push-
ing for the resignations of se-
nior university officials, as well
as a revamping of the way the
university accepts donations.
“Every senior administrator
who knew about these dona-
tions should resign,” said Na-
than Foster, 23, a resident of
Somerville and a spokesman
for No Dark Money at MIT.
Foster also said that his
group, which has a few dozenmembers, believes that a panel
of students, faculty, and staff
should have a voice about
which donors the university ac-
cepts money from moving for-
ward.
“This isn’t a matter of re-
evaluating something that was
considered OK at the time,”
Foster said. “The donations
were considered so toxic at the
time” that university officials
insisted they remain anony-
mous.
Reif, in his letter to MIT,
seemed to dispute that his ad-
ministration knew how contro-
versial the donations were. “Of
course they did not know what
we all know about Epstein
now,” he wrote. “We did not see
through the limited facts we
had, and we did not take time
to understand the gravity of Ep-
stein’s offenses or the harm to
his young victims.”
Despite Epstein’s conviction
in 2008, Ito has said he wooed
Epstein as a donor for the lab
when he met him in 2013. Ep-
stein was found dead in August
in his jail cell at a federal deten-
tion facility in Manhattan,
where he was being held on
charges of sex trafficking of mi-
nors.
Ito has said that the Media
Lab took $525,000 from Ep-
stein, and media reports sug-
gest that he took $1.2 million
from the financier for his own
venture funds. Ito has also said
he traveled to Epstein’s homes.
But Epstein’s involvement
with the Media Lab extended
far beyond that. Ito and other
MIT employees wrote in e-
mails that Epstein had acted as
an intermediary to help the Me-
dia Lab secure major dona-
tions, including $5.5 million
from investor Leon Black,
founder of one of the world’s
largest private equity firms,
and $2 million from Gates.
“I think it was right for Joi
Ito to step down,” Foster said.
But, he added, “now that we
know that so many more senior
administrators were intimately
involved in the decision to ac-
cept Jeffrey Epstein’s money, it
is not sufficient.”Travis Andersen of the Globe
staff contributed to this report.
Zoe Greenberg can be reached
at [email protected].By Rachael Bade
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON — A group
of Judiciary Committee Demo-
crats has begun privately map-
ping a list of possible charges
against President Trump,
sketching out the contours of
potential articles of impeach-
ment even as House leaders
publicly resist taking such ac-
tion, according to a half-dozen
lawmakers and congressional
aides.
The informal discussions,
closely held and preliminary,
could produce a range of allega-
tions — some that echo charges
in proceedings against Presi-
dent Richard M. Nixon: ob-
struction of justice, abuse of
power and defiance of subpoe-
nas, as well as violation of cam-
paign finance law and allega-
tions of self-enrichment, said
the individuals, who spoke on
the condition of anonymity be-
cause of the sensitive nature of
their work.
Members of the Judiciary
Committee believe they have
identified five areas of potential
obstruction in former Special
Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe
ofRussianinterferenceinthe
2016 election, episodes Demo-
crats will explore further dur-
ing a hearing Tuesday with for-
mer Trump campaign official
Corey Lewandowski and other
ex-Trump aides.
Additional potential im-
peachment articles being ex-
plored by the committee could
focus on hush-money payments
to two women who claimed to
have had affairs with Trump
and allegations that the presi-
dent has used his public office
to benefit his private business,
according to the people familiar
with the discussions.
Several people close to the
investigation cautioned that the
articles may never be drafted,
particularly given the reluc-
tance of House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi, Democrat of California,
to move forward. But the be-
hind-the-scenes planning re-
flects a growing desire among
House Democrats to build a
public case against Trump —
and soon — even if there’s no
chance the Senate would con-
vict him.
The committee voted along
party lines Thursday on new in-
vestigative procedures the pan-
el will use ‘‘to determine wheth-
er to recommend articles of im-
peachment with respect to
President Donald J. Trump,’’ the
resolution reads. Similar proce-
dures have been used in im-
peachment proceedings against
Nixon and President Bill Clin-
ton.
The additional tools would
allow the committee to desig-nate certain hearings as im-
peachment sessions, allow
counsels to question witnesses
publicly, permit some evidence
to remain private, and allow the
president’s counsel to respond
in writing to evidence and testi-
mony.
White House counselor Kel-
lyanne Conway dismissed the
notion of impeachment, telling
reporters Thursday, ‘‘There’s no
public appetite for that.’’
The public drama will unfold
as the country moves toward a
hotly contested 2020 campaign
and Democratic hopefuls jockey
for the presidential nomination
— one of the reasons some Judi-
ciary Committee Democrats
fear time is running out. The
party’s liberal base, most of its
presidential candidates, and a
majority of House Democrats —
134 of the 235 — endorse im-
peachment, putting pressure on
Pelosi.
In a statement to The Wash-
ington Post, Daniel Schwarz, a
spokesman for Judiciary Com-
mittee Democrats, played down
any discussions about articles
of impeachment, reaffirming
the panel’s public position that
‘‘the committee is focused on its
investigation to determine
whethertorecommendarticles
of impeachment.’’
‘‘Any suggestion that such
articles have already been draft-
ed or that the committee’s work
is already concluded is categori-
cally false.’’By Seth Borenstein,
Nicholas Riccardi,
and Hannah Fingerhut
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Presi-
dent Trump gets some of his
worst marks from the Ameri-
can people when it comes to his
handling of climate change,
and majorities believe the plan-
et is warming and support gov-
ernment actions that he has
sometimes scoffed at.
While the administration
has rolled back regulations to
cut emissions of heat-trapping
carbon dioxide from power and
industrial plants and pushed
for more coal use, wide shares
of Americans say they want just
the opposite, according to a
new poll from The Associated
Press-NORC Center for Public
Affairs Research.
About two out of three
Americans say corporations
have a responsibility to combat
climate change, and a similar
share also say it’s the job of the
US government.
But 64 percent of Americans
say they disapprove of Trump’s
policies toward climate change
while about half that many say
they approve. That 32 percent
approval of his climate policies
is the lowest among six issue ar-
eas that the poll asked about,
including immigration, 38 per-
cent, and and health care, 37
percent.
Ann Florence, a 70-year-old
retiree and self-described inde-
pendent from Jonesborough,
Tenn., said she faults Trump on
climate change ‘‘because he
doesn’t believe it’s happening.
It is changing, if he would just
look at what’s happening.’’
While a majority of Republi-
cans do approve of Trump’s per-
formance on climate change,
his marks among the GOP on
the issue are slightly lower com-
pared with other issues. Mean-
while, 7 percent of Democrats
and 29 percent of independents
approve of Trump on climate
change.
Ricky Kendrick, a 30-year-
old in Grand Junction, Colo.,
said he is contemplating leav-
ing the Republican Party, partly
over its denial of climate
change.
‘‘They don’t see it as a priori-
ty at all,’’ Kendrick, a hardware
salesman in the heart of west-
ern Colorado’s energy belt,
complained of the president
and his party. ‘‘There are some
(weather) things happening
that I’ve never seen before...
Something’s changing.’’
He was alarmed at Trump’s
departure from the Paris cli-
mate accord and wants the
United States to reduce off-
shore drilling, end subsidies for
fossil fuels, and ramp up those
for renewable energy.
While the poll finds about
half of Americans want to de-
crease or eliminate subsidies
for fossil fuels, a similar share
say subsidies for renewable en-
ergy should be increased.
But will Trump’s climate
change denial — often voiced in
tweets — matter in 2020?
‘‘Climate has not historically
been what people vote on, but I
think the tides are changing on
that,’’ said University of Mary-
land sociologist Dana Fisher,
who studies the environmental
movement.
She said her research shows
that young people, who don’t
vote in large numbers, are acti-
vated by climate change.
Climate change is becoming
more of a national priority
among Democrats but not Re-
publicans, said Tony Leiserow-
itz, director of the Yale Program
on Climate Change Communi-
cation. It might make a differ-
ence in a close race, he said.
In the new poll, roughly
three out of four Americans say
they believe climate change is
happening and a large majority
of those think humans are at
least partly to blame. In total,
47 percent of all Americans saythey think climate change is
happening and is caused most-
ly or entirely by human activi-
ties; 20 percent think it’s caused
about equally by human activi-
ties and natural changes in the
environment; and 8 percent
think it’s happening but is
caused mostly or entirely by
natural changes in the environ-
ment. Americans are slightly
more likely to favor taxing the
use of carbon-based fuels than
to oppose it, 37 percent to 31
percent. If that revenue is
turned into a tax rebate to all
Americans, approval ticks up to
43 percent.MIT,Harvardrevealmore
connectionstoEpstein
ASSOCIATED PRESS/FILE
L. Rafael Reif said the latest
revelations were uncovered
by Goodwin Procter.Group of Democrats mapping
possible impeachment articles
List of charges
being compiled
in private
Poll: Business should lead on climate
AmericansgivePresidentTrumplowmarksonhisstewardshipofclimate
andenergyisses,whilemostthinkcorporations,government,andother
industrializednationsbeartheonusofaddressingclimatechange,accord-
ingtoanAP-NORCCenterpoll.Resultsbasedoninterviewswith1,058USadultsconductedAug.15-18.The
marginoferroris±4.2percentagepointsforthefullsample,higherforsubgroups.YourlocalgovernmentofficialsDevelopingcountriesIndividualpeopleYourstategovernmentofficialsDevelopedorindustrialized
countriesoutsidetheUSTheUSfederalgovernmentCorporationsandindustryQ: How much responsibility does each of the following have for
addressing climate change?Percentage who approve of the way President Trump is handling ...Agreatdeal/Alot Some Notmuch/Noneatall66%64605350484821%20242829312912%131417191822Climate
change
32%Energy
policy
39%Trump
slumps on
climate
change
Most disapprove
of his policies
SOURCE:AP-NORCCenterforPublicAffairsResearch
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