“In October, 2014, the Media Lab received a two-million-dollar donation from Bill Gates; Ito wrote in an internal e-mail, ‘This is a $2M gift from Bill Gates directed by Jeffrey Epstein.'”

MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito resigned from his position on Saturday after a bombshell report by investigative journalist Ronan Farrow revealed he concealed up to $8 million in donations from convicted pedophile and accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The report reveals new details about Epstein’s network of famous tech moguls and scientists, and how they have worked to conceal their relationships with him.

Ito, who traveled to Epstein’s secret island twice, also stepped down from his board seat at the New York Times Company and the MacArthur Foundation after Farrow’s article was published in the New Yorker on Saturday. Notably, Epstein’s crimes were scarcely reported by major media outlets until Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald reopened an investigation into Epstein’s 2008 plea deal negotiated by former Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta last November.

Farrow’s report reveals how Ito and Peter Cohen, the MIT Media Lab’s director of development and strategy at the time, have worked with Epstein for years despite the university designated him as disqualified for donations for his history of pedophilia. Ito and Cohen instructed their staff to keep the donations secret, while Ito carried out extensive contact with Epstein and referred to him as “fascinating.”

Some of the Lab’s staff called Epstein as “Voldemort,” or “he who must not be named,” from the Harry Potter series, Farrow writes. In 2015, Epstein visited the lab, accompanied by two female “assistants,” while Ito and other staff worked to keep his name off the official calendar. Signe Swenson, a former employee at the lab, told Farrow that Epstein’s visit and his insistence on bringing his “assistants” made some of the staff uncomfortable.

“They were models. Eastern European, definitely,” said Swenson. Among the lab’s staff, she said, “all of us women made it a point to be super nice to them. We literally had a conversation about how, on the off chance that they’re not there by choice, we could maybe help them.”

Farrow’s report shows emails between Epstein and Ito in which Epstein acts as a middleman to solicit donations from prominent figures like Bill Gates and private equity CEO Leon Black, raising questions as to why the two billionaires would give millions to the Media Lab in secret.

Bill Gates Ties to Jeffrey Epstein

Farrow described how Epstein directed contributions from billionaire philanthropist and technologist Bill Gates to the Media Lab:

“In October, 2014, the Media Lab received a two-million-dollar donation from Bill Gates; Ito wrote in an internal e-mail, ‘This is a $2M gift from Bill Gates directed by Jeffrey Epstein.’ Cohen replied, ‘For gift recording purposes, we will not be mentioning Jeffrey’s name as the impetus for this gift.’ A mandatory record of the gift filed within the university stated only that ‘Gates is making this gift at the recommendation of a friend of his who wishes to remain anonymous.'”

“An agent for Gates wrote to the leadership of the Media Lab, stating that Gates also wished to keep his name out of any public discussion of the donation,” wrote Farrow.

Gates’ spokesperson denies the claim, saying that “any claim that Epstein directed any programmatic or personal grant making for Bill Gates is completely false.”

in August, CNBC reported that Gates met with Epstein in New York in 2013, to discuss “ways to increase philanthropic spending.” Gates also reportedly flew on one of Epstein’s private planes from New York to Palm Beach, where Epstein was originally arrested in 2008.

Two days before his mysterious death, Epstein transferred an estimated $578 million in assets to a trust, making it more difficult for investigators to track the funds and for victims to acquire compensatory damages. Strangely, Epstein listed Bill Gates’ former science adviser Boris Nikolic as a “successor executor” to manage his will if the named executors, Darren K. Indyke and Richard D. Kahn, can’t complete their roles.

Epstein’s Extensive Connections To The Tech Elite

In New York Times columnist James B. Stewart’s August article about his 2018 interview with Epstein, the journalist said the highly-connected financier spoke of the overlooked hedonism in Silicon Valley:

“Mr. Epstein then meandered into a discussion of other prominent names in technology circles,” Stewart wrote. “He said people in Silicon Valley had a reputation for being geeky workaholics, but that was far from the truth: They were hedonistic and regular users of recreational drugs. He said he’d witnessed prominent tech figures taking drugs and arranging for sex.”

Marvin Minsky, a co-founder of the MIT media lab and the “father of artificial intelligence,” is also known to have been part of Epstein’s circle. In a recently unsealed document, a woman testified that she was forced to have sex with Minsky, who died in 2016, at Epstein’s mansion in the Virgin Islands.

Leon Black, CEO of private equity giant Apollo and chairman of the board of the Museum of Modern Art, donated $5.5 million to the Media Lab through Epstein and donated $10 million directly to Epstein’s foundation in 2015. Black has avoided questions about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Last month the Daily Mail reported that Epstein’s fixer, mysterious socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, was staying at the house of Scott Borgerson, the CEO of CargoMetrics. Borgerson told Business Insider she was an old friend but denied the claim: “Ghislaine Maxwell is not at my home and I don’t know where she is.”

Linkedin Founder Reid Hoffman has reportedly hosted dinners for Epstein with tech giants like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg in attendance. Hoffman, who is also a juror for the MIT Media Lab’s Disobedience Award, shot down author Anand Giridharadas after he raised questions about Epstein’s connections to the Award.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak held a close relationship with Epstein and invested with him in Carbyne, a public safety tech startup critics say could be used for cutting edge mass surveillance technology.

Epstein also has notable ties to Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Lawrence Summers (who was Clinton’s Treasury Secretary and an economic adviser to Obama), Prince Andrew, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, author Steven Pinker, and countless other elites in the realms of science, technology, academia, politics, and art. Despite Epstein’s known history of raping children, many of the world’s most powerful figures continued to associate with him, often taking measures to obscure the nature of their relationships.