Eric Lander met Jeffrey Epstein twice
President Biden’s choice for his top science adviser is facing an uphill confirmation battle in Washington as ties to Jeffrey Epstein emerge as an issue in his consideration, according to a report.
Questions over Eric Lander’s association with Epstein have
delayed his nomination to be director of the Office of Science and Technology
Policy, Politico reported.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) wants to know more about how
Lander, current director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and a
prominent geneticist, came to be associated with the pedophile financier before
his death in 2019.
Cantwell and Lander have reportedly met, and her office told
Politico, “We’re having a hearing on him next week and we’ll see what happens
with that.”
Lander, who previously served as a part-time scientific
adviser to President Barack Obama’s administration, had been photographed with
Epstein multiple times, and the financier showcased some of their pictures
together on his charity work website, JeffreyEpstein.org.
He claimed to have sponsored Lander, an assertion the
geneticist rebutted. Other scientists have issued similar denials.
Epstein poured millions of dollars into scientific
institutions to burnish his image and to hawk harebrained ideas like
impregnating dozens of women to propagate his own DNA.
Lander and other distinguished scientists lunched with
Epstein in 2012 in the office of now-disgraced Harvard professor Martin Nowak.
Epstein pleaded guilty to solicitation of an underage prostitute four years
prior.
Lander’s confirmation hearing is scheduled for April 29,
while Biden’s other cabinet picks have been confirmed for months now.
The White House acknowledged the unsavory connection but
defended Lander in a statement: “Dr. Lander briefly met Epstein in Spring 2012,
at two events with multiple Harvard donors, faculty and others, and he
correctly decided to have nothing to do with Epstein.”
The White House noted that the institute Lander leads, the
Broad, neither solicited nor accepted funding from Epstein, nor did Lander
receive personal donations, as other MIT professors did.
Lander pleaded ignorance to BuzzFeed News when asked about
the meeting in 2019, claiming he did not know Epstein would be there and did
not know the infamous pedophile’s history.
Epstein died in 2019 by suicide in the Metropolitan
Correctional Center in Manhattan. His longtime companion Ghislaine Maxwell is
now charged with sex trafficking for allegedly grooming and procuring girls for
him to abuse.
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