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  42. Outrunning Review
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  44. War's Real Bill Arrives Far From the Gulf
  45. The Legal Justification Comes Last
  46. A Price, Not a Front
  47. The Price of a War Nobody Calls a War
  48. War's Second Front Is Economic
  49. Three Instruments, One Method
  50. Fight Over the Machinery
  51. Documents Caught Up With Statements
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  56. War Washington Cannot End
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  59. Money Lost, Surveillance Won
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  63. Past the Point It Can Hold
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  66. Risk Moves Down
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  71. Two Orders and a Shrinking Stockpile
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  77. The Claim Arrives First

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In the thread The Academic Circle

Co-Drafting a Defense

In September and October 2018, as Arizona State University investigated sexual-misconduct allegations against physicist Lawrence Krauss, Krauss and Jeffrey Epstein traded drafts of Krauss's institutional response. Epstein was editing the document. The chain is dated 9 months before Epstein's own arrest.

Investigation. , updated . 4 minutes. By .

Old Main, the historic administration building at Arizona State University, Tempe campus (2016).
Arizona State University's Tempe campus.Photo: Daderot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Documents
1
document
Citations
18
citations
People
3
people
Pages of record
3
pages of record
Reading time
4
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Source discipline

13 primary, 5 corroborating, 0 tertiary. 18 citations in all.

  • T1 Primary
  • T2 Corroborating
  • T3 Tertiary
Anchor documents
People in this piece
  • Lawrence Krauss, Adjacent
  • Jeffrey Edward Epstein, Principal, Deceased
  • Noam Chomsky, Adjacent
Reading key
Miami HeraldSource 14reportingSarah KellenResearch Vault referenceEditorial essayargumentargument or opinion

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:" EFTA01020499EE, EFTA01020499 on Epstein Exposed, an alternative host for the same document

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." EFTA01020499EE, EFTA01020499 on Epstein Exposed, an alternative host for the same document

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.

Documentary artifact

The thread, interactive

7 messages.

The drafting thread

Eight days of back-and-forth between Krauss’s ASU-account email and Epstein’s personal Gmail — drafts exchanged, attributions disputed, edits surfaced.

Sent from Krauss’s Arizona State University account. To: Epstein’s personal Gmail. CC: nancy dahl. Two attachments — damages.docx and Statement and Scenarios.docx.

The 2-word body — “First drafts:” — opens the revision cycle. Epstein is being treated as an editor of the institutional-response document Krauss is preparing.

Source.EFTA01020499, at justice.govEE, EFTA01020499 on Epstein Exposed, an alternative host for the same document

Eight days after the first drafts landed, Epstein sends Krauss a revised version. The specific edits are in the attached documents, not inline in the email text.

Source.EFTA01020499, at justice.govEE, EFTA01020499 on Epstein Exposed, an alternative host for the same document

Krauss reads the revision, doesn’t see enough change, pushes back. The email is informal — lowercase “hi”, double-periods — which establishes the register of the relationship.

Source.EFTA01020499, at justice.govEE, EFTA01020499 on Epstein Exposed, an alternative host for the same document

Two words. Epstein is attributing the word “equitable” in the draft back to Krauss — claiming the edit was Krauss’s own, not his.

Source.EFTA01020499, at justice.govEE, EFTA01020499 on Epstein Exposed, an alternative host for the same document

Krauss accepts the attribution and offers to revert. The smiley face is part of the indexed source text.

Source.EFTA01020499, at justice.govEE, EFTA01020499 on Epstein Exposed, an alternative host for the same document

An idiom roughly meaning “that’s the first problem” or “that was the opening move.” The exchange continues after this.

Source.EFTA01020499, at justice.govEE, EFTA01020499 on Epstein Exposed, an alternative host for the same document

Krauss scans back through the thread and surfaces a September 27 email in which Epstein had already edited Krauss’s September 26 statement. Krauss names the edit and notes that Epstein made it — 9 months before Epstein’s own arrest.

Source.EFTA01020499, at justice.govEE, EFTA01020499 on Epstein Exposed, an alternative host for the same document