On September 29, 2018, at 11:03 p.m., Lawrence Krauss sent an email from his Arizona State University account to Jeffrey Epstein's personal Gmail address. A second name was on the To line: nancy dahl. The subject: "Document summarizing damages, and document with University Statement and proposed resolution-first drafts." Attached were two files, damages.docx and "Statement and Scenarios.docx." The body was 2 words. "First drafts:" [EFTA01020499]
In February 2018, BuzzFeed News published an investigation documenting sexual-misconduct allegations against Krauss, then Director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University. ASU opened an internal review. Krauss stepped down from the Origins Project directorship later that year. He retired from ASU in 2019. Krauss has publicly disputed the allegations.
This article is not about the merits of the allegations. It is about what the EFTA corpus shows of how Krauss prepared his response to ASU, and what role Jeffrey Epstein played in that preparation.
The Thread
The September 29 drafts were the start of a revision cycle. Eight days later, on Sunday October 7, Krauss and Epstein were still trading versions.
That Sunday afternoon, Epstein sent Krauss a revised version of the drafts. Krauss opened it, read through, and wrote back:
"Hi.. these just look like my earlier versions.. you didn't rewrite at all, did you?"
Epstein's reply was 2 words. "Equitable- yours." He was attributing the word "equitable" in the draft back to Krauss.
Krauss took the attribution and walked it back:
"I will go back to earlier versions. :)"
Epstein replied again. "That was the first monkey."
Krauss scanned the earlier emails in the thread, saw that Epstein had in fact edited his September 26 statement with a September 27 revision, and wrote:
"see my emails.. sept 27th email from you changing my sept 26th statement, adding something to that effect.. not important but amusing."
That night, Krauss sent the next revision. The attachment was statement5concil.docx, a conciliation-version naming convention numbered 5. The body was 6 words. "revised version without the equitable bullshit." [EFTA01020499]
The Timing
October 7, 2018 was 9 months before Jeffrey Epstein's July 6, 2019 arrest in Teterboro on federal sex-trafficking charges, and 10 months before his death in federal custody in New York on August 10, 2019. Lawrence Krauss was 64 and still on ASU's faculty.
The pattern from another 2017 email in the same corpus recurs here. An academic in the middle of a personal crisis routed the matter to Epstein privately, outside the normal advisory channel. The specific crisis is different (tax strategy in the Chomsky case, legal-defense strategy in this one), and the mechanism is different (financial advice in one, document markup in the other). The common thread is what Epstein was in the transaction. Jeffrey Epstein was functioning as an informal counselor on highly personal matters for named academics in his circle, and the record of those engagements sits in a single release of DOJ documents.
What the Record Does Not Show
Whether the final version of Krauss's University Statement, as submitted to ASU, contained Epstein's edits. Whether "equitable bullshit" referred to a specific passage Epstein had written, a specific framing Krauss had tested, or both. What nancy dahl's role in the drafting was. Whether ASU's internal investigation ever became aware of Epstein's involvement in the drafting. None of those questions is answered by the verified primary source.
Several Items Remain Open
Nancy Dahl's full name and role. The statement5concil.docx attachment itself, which is not indexed in the corpus as a standalone document. The full Krauss-Epstein correspondence record across 2010 through 2018, which the EFTA corpus holds at approximately 25 emails plus additional document pages per the Phase 2 research-librarian sweep; a complete retrieval is the next step.