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Warning: This article contains descriptions of child sexual abuse, transphobia, and racism. While we have redacted slurs from the text of the article, many of the links, and one embedded image, include uncensored slurs and other offensive content from the DOJ data dump and other sources.

Last Friday, the Department of Justice released millions of new Jeffrey Epstein files mandated by a recently passed law. The information expands the body of evidence demonstrating that the predatory behavior of the prolific human trafficker and his close associates also involved a fetishistic and transphobic obsession with trans people, especially trans women.

Many of those associates were part of a group called Edge.org, an atheist organization run by literary agent John Brockman and bankrolled by Epstein, which has served as a loose predecessor for the far-right “intellectual dark web” (IDW). During the research for this article, Trans News Network uncovered at least eight prominent anti-trans figures affiliated with Edge or the IDW who received support from Epstein or even visited his island, often through connections with Brockman or physicist Lawrence Krauss.

The IDW is a loosely defined group of scientists and other figures who have made careers from attacking perceived “wokeness” in higher education and the media. In practice this involves encouraging hatred against trans people and other marginalized groups, often Muslims. They often denounce university processes against sexual harassment and discrimination on the dubious grounds of “academic freedom,” and have successfully lobbied the Trump administration to make it harder for women in college to prove sexual abuse.

The emails shed light on the true motivation for their ideology, showing how the billionaire backers of the early IDW social group had a vested interest in convincing the public that women who accuse powerful men of sexual abuse are liars, and spent millions of dollars and years of their lives bringing a right-wing movement that discredits victims into the mainstream.

In the early 2010s, the emails show, Brockman connected Epstein to a number of similarly-minded atheists, scientists and other billionaires, who proceeded to communicate extensively in email threads with the wealthy rapist over various personal matters and professional topics related to science.

Those email threads — which sometimes included Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk — later turned into private conferences at Epstein and Brockman’s properties as well as public events and debates. Brockman once bragged to Epstein that “the net worth of the 40 guests at my 2014 ‘billionaires dinner’ was equal to combined wealth [sic.] of 60% of all Americans.”

In the years since, many of those academics have gone on to become prolific public figures who have made careers out of hateful speech against trans people and other minorities.

The emails reveal new details of the sexual misconduct allegations that led to Arizona State University suspending Lawrence Krauss, a right-wing physicist,in 2018. Krauss retired from ASU a few months later, with a university spokesman saying he “chose to retire” rather than proceed to another hearing.

Back in 2006, Krauss organized a small scientific conference on Epstein’s island, which included scientists like Stephen Hawking and other Nobel laureates. He also helped organize another island conference in 2010.

In 2011, skeptic writer Rebecca Watson criticized Lawrence Krauss for defending Epstein in the name of “science,” despite Epstein’s 2008 conviction for raping children. Krauss denied that Epstein ever raped children and said he didn’t “feel tarnished in any way by my relationship with Jeffrey; I feel raised by it.”

Epstein clearly noticed Krauss’ vigorous defense—and rewarded him for his loyalty. He pledged $100,000 to Krauss’ project at ASU between 2014 and 2018, and Epstein’s billionaire benefactor (and alleged child rapist) Leon Black subsequently pledged a whopping $2 million in 2015.

Krauss claimed he raised a total of $4 million for the project in 2018, meaning that a large portion of his funding came from billionaires accused of child rape.

The full letter sent to Krauss by ASU that iterates the body of the university’s findings and evidence against him is also in the released Epstein files, likely because the file was sent to Epstein at some point. This letter has new information compared to the previously released letter by ASU from 2018, which had not included his sexual comments about trans women.

These comments include one incident in September 2016, when Krauss commented to staff "she's really got balls" in reference to a trans woman who wanted to make an appearance at one of his events. Krauss admitted to making the statement, according to the letter.

In another instance, the ASU document states that staff claimed Krauss said “Oh wow. She’s hot.” after seeing a picture of a trans woman sometime in 2015-2016, which Krauss admitted to in another document.

The document also says that the university concluded that Krauss grabbed a woman’s breast during a gala reception.

“It is clear from the investigation that Respondent fostered a work environment where sexual banter was not uncommon,” the report concluded, after listing many other allegations of sexual comments about women gathered from other staff.

While Krauss’ anti-trans beliefs may have motivated the alleged sexual misconduct that got him fired, the ASU letter stated that Krauss’ beliefs fell within his right to academic freedom and did not violate the institution’s nondiscrimination policy and were not considered during the investigation, contrary to what he has often insinuated.

The files also include the email sent to Krauss from a Buzzfeed reporter about the allegations that led to the ASU investigation, which included details of six separate incidents of alleged sexual impropriety in professional settings, some never published.

During the peak of the #MeToo movement that year, many similarly powerful men had their careers ended by similar accusations. But Krauss benefited from his connection with one of the world’s top experts at fighting complaints of serial sexual abuse–Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein and Krauss exchanged hundreds of texts and emails over the several months between the initial Buzzfeed investigation and his retirement.

Epstein personally helped him craft a defense strategy to the allegations and media reports, provided emotional support, edited his correspondence with the university, and even talked him down from suing ASU–the experienced rapist knew that Krauss had no case.

Unluckily for Krauss, the entirety of the draft of his (very angry) “confidential” retirement letter–including portions that were edited out by Epstein and others–is now publicly available because he chose to send it to a prolific sex criminal.

While he has long denied many of the allegations from his time at ASU, Krauss admitted to, and even tried to justify, gratuitous sexual comments about trans women he made around coworkers in one later-removed section of his retirement letter. He also helpfully included a “grade school” sketch of a “light bulb” that he drew in front of colleagues.

Since Krauss’s retirement from academia (and hopefully sketch art), Epstein continued to advise and fund him as he pivoted to building an anti-trans podcast on his YouTube channel and accompanying Substack, where he has interviewed a large number of TERFs and other anti-trans figures, including other Epstein associates like Richard Dawkins.

But Krauss’s admiration for Epstein grew well past the point of just a professional relationship. Over time, the messages show, Krauss developed a deeply emotional, personal bond with the serial rapist, formed through almost a decade of supporting each other through cases of women taking the difficult step of accusing them of sexual abuse.

“You are one of the most amazing people I have ever known,” he texted Epstein during his fight with ASU leadership in 2018, after some drinks.

Just a few months after Krauss’s retirement, the Miami Herald published its bombshell report that swung the Epstein case back open and exposed the corruption behind the federal non-prosecution agreement against the billionaire.

Grateful for his recent support, Krauss made sure Epstein knew he had his back after that too.

Epstein brushed the article off at the time, but the pressure only grew. After months of growing pressure on the billionaire from newspapers and federal investigators, Krauss offered Epstein support and even refuge.

A few weeks letter, the physicist tarred by sexual harassment allegations texted Epstein that a landmark Nature study finding that sexual harassment was pervasive in U.S. physics programs was “hysterical if it weren’t so stupid.” Krauss argued that a sample drawn from a women in physics conference was a “biased sample” for determining the experience of women in physics.

All the way to the end, Krauss stayed a loyal friend to Epstein, always keeping the increasingly ostracized billionaire in his thoughts. Just weeks before his arrest (and two months before his alleged suicide), Epstein advised Krauss to take his podcast in a more reactionary direction, encouraging him to lean into his identity as a “provocateur.”

Epstein finished the conversation by offering his support. “As you know. I truly hope this works for you. So I'm looking forward to see the results.”

In the years since 2019, Krauss has followed that advice, growing his Epstein-funded podcast considerably. He has brought on a number of anti-trans activists and scientists as guests such as Karleen Gribble, Judith Suissa, Alice Sullivan, Sabine Hossenfelder and Kathleen Stock.

Each one of these transphobic influencers have come on his show despite the fact that it has been public knowledge for many years that Krauss was a close affiliate of Epstein and was forced into retirement from academia due to sexual harassment allegations.

Many anti-trans activists earn a living by spreading propaganda against trans people, often in the name of “science” or “women’s rights,” despite plainly working against both. Coming on his show elevates their careers and helps bump their visibility in the increasingly lucrative marketplace for billionaire-funded anti-trans bloggers and podcasters, exemplified by the buyout of Bari Weiss’s anti-trans Substack by CBS for $150 million.

Another reason transphobic influencers don’t mind platforming Krauss is much simpler: they couldn’t avoid Epstein’s associates if they tried. Krauss was hardly the only anti-trans activist who was affiliated with Epstein.

Richard Dawkins, a biologist and longtime ally of Krauss, has made a name for himself through his open bigotry against Muslims and trans people and has made many public appearances with Krauss. He was also invited to Epstein’s island at least twice.

The public has known about his visit to Epstein’s island in 2002 since 2019. But the documents reveal that Dawkins was invited to the island once more in 2010 alongside another anti-trans scientist, Steven Pinker, years after Epstein’s conviction for sex crimes involving a minor.

The 2010 island event included an advisory board meeting for Krauss’s academic project that he later started at ASU with Epstein’s financial support. Krauss assured the recipients, however, that “the organized sessions will occupy only a modest fraction of the time there and that we will plan some interesting activities around the actual meeting.”

According to their agenda for the event, most of the time was spent as a conference on various scientific topics. But on the last day, the time after 5 p.m. was blocked off vaguely as “Evening.. entertainment of some sort.”

Pinker and Dawkins ultimately were unable to come due to logistical issues. But their invites reveal the proximity of the atheist friend group to Epstein.

The U.S. government has described Little Saint James in a criminal complaint as “the perfect hideaway and haven for trafficking young women and underage girls for sexual servitude, child abuse and sexual assault.”

The year after his invite to the island, Dawkins alerted Brockman (which he forwarded to Epstein) to Rebecca Watson’s criticism of Krauss mentioned earlier in this article, referring to the atheist blogger as a “rather nasty young woman” who was “running some kind of witch-hunt against Lawrence Krauss because of his defence of Jeffrey Epstein.”

Watson responded to the new information earlier this week on her website.

“This email is very funny to me, because it really highlights how much I got under Dawkins’ skin without even trying and without even knowing. For me, his post came out of nowhere, and then I watched as he blackballed me from every major skeptic, atheist, and humanist organization in the world. His employees let me know that a person couldn’t even say my name in his presence without him blowing up, and one volunteer even related how she saw him scream at the president of American Atheists for even suggesting I be invited to Reason Rally.”

Photo: Steven Pinker, Robert Trivers, Jeffrey Epstein, Larry Summers at a dinner in 2004.

Another affiliate of the intellectual dark web found across many emails —and on the invite list for the 2010 island visit —is psychologist Steven Pinker, described by Andrea James of Transgender Map as a “central figure in anti-transgender extremism” going back to the early 2000s.

Pinker was quoted twice in J. Michael Bailey’s 2003 anti-trans book The Man Who Would Be Queen, according to James, and was once defended by Jesse Singal in The New York Times.

He was part of the same atheist social group as Krauss, and sometimes met with Epstein in meetings arranged by Krauss (who once told Epstein he thought Pinker was “cute”), alongside other figures like Dawkins. Pinker even once met with Bill Gates, possibly through Epstein.

More recently, he appeared on a racist podcast exploring the debunked concept of “race science.”

The psychologist’s name showed up on several invite lists sent to Epstein for private events in 2011 and 2013, alongside Krauss and another anti-trans figure Jonathan Haidt. Like many others, Pinker benefited indirectly from Epstein’s support for Krauss through appearances at Krauss’s events at ASU. Once, Epstein and Krauss even helped him connect to the late physicist Stephen Hawkings.

Photo: Epstein and Robert Trivers had a close personal relationship with one another.

Another academic tied to the group of atheists through Brockman is biologist Robert Trivers, who has regularly produced openly transphobic “research,” funded by Epstein, about LGBTQ people. The emails reveal Trivers’ interest in studying trans people was primarily motivated by his sexual fetishization of trans women and Epstein’s financial and verbal encouragement to study trans people.

After Trivers’ initial request for funding in 2010, Epstein sent the biologist between 20 and 30 thousand dollars multiple times through at least 2017, possibly longer.

Trivers, like Krauss, was also eager to defend Epstein publicly. In 2015, Trivers minimized Epstein’s Florida conviction for raping children to the media in an attempt to defend Epstein’s integrity, arguing that girls mature earlier than in the past. “By the time they're 14 or 15, they're like grown women were 60 years ago, so I don't see these acts as so heinous.”

After this article was published, he received a large amount of hate mail from disgusted academics and other members of the public, which he jovially passed along to Epstein in order to mock them for their outrage against his minimization of child rape.

Epstein forwarded the article to former White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler, who commented “Trivers needs media training.” Not included by the lawyer, who is now Goldman Sach’s top counsel, was any outrage of his defense of raping children.

Trivers permanently parted ways with Rutgers University not long after the affair. Likely impressed by Trivers’ depraved show of loyalty, Epstein continued to back Trivers with money and ideas, even offering emotional support when Trivers expressed his “homicidal” urges.

It wasn’t long before Trivers’ “research,” more dependent than ever on Epstein’s support, took a much darker and overtly fetishistic tone. On more than one occasion, he sent emails to Epstein that included perverted transmisogynistic rhetoric familiar to any trans person who has encountered chasers, misogynistic cis people (usually men) who have an obsessive desire to have sex with trans people because of their genitals.

In one email to Epstein in 2016, Trivers wrote, “If you as a heterosexual male [sic.] and have a minor desire to suck a dick then what better organism to do it with than a transsexual?”

Around the same time, Epstein elevated Trivers’ research to Peter Thiel, a far-right venture capitalist who has long had close ties with Trump and the MAGA movement.

In 2018, Trivers discussed the quantity of trans pornography on the internet in another message laden with fetishistic rhetoric, and then tells Epstein a common far-right lie that three-year-old children are given hormone therapy. Trump repeatedly used the same lie to fearmonger about trans healthcare in the 2024 election.

In another email that year, he discussed “trans-sexual rodents,” an idea far outside the mainstream of science – and another lie that was repeated by Trump in a 2025 speech — which has since been used to attack federal funding for actual science about gender.

In case you weren’t counting, that’s two lies about trans people sent from Trivers to Epstein that ended up in Trump’s mouth just a few years later.

Epstein, a “true believer” of his talents, encouraged and funded Trivers to continue down this path of “study” up until the year of his arrest. He also nudged Trivers away from studying the honor killings of women, a practice Trivers objected to by arguing that it wouldn’t benefit a father to kill his 17 year old daughter who is “physically beautiful.”

Through this time period, Trivers relied heavily on Epstein when faced with what appear in the emails to be allegations of sexual abuse that threatened his appointment at Chapman University.

In November 2019, according to an FBI crisis intake document, an individual who had met Trivers to “discuss science” reported in a phone interview that they had witnessed Trivers sexually assault a 15 year old girl during the meeting.

Trivers contributions to science over the last several years have bizarrely fixated on studying the finger digit ratios of different ethnicities, ages, sexualities, and genders. One paper of his published in 2020 – likely funded by Epstein – used transphobic language describing trans people as having “transgendered belief,” which the study defines as “the conviction that one is the opposite gender to one’s natal gender.”

Trivers’ creepy sexualization of trans women can’t be separated from his harmful scientific “research,” public defense of child rape, and his own allegations of sexual abuse. It shows how some academics have ulterior motives when studying trans people or other marginalized groups.

Jonathan Haidt is another psychologist with a history of advocating against the rights of trans people. He has written about the unscientific concept of “social contagion” theory (also known as “rapid onset gender dysphoria”), suggesting that gender dysphoria is related to social media trends.

Like others many affiliated with the IDW, he has strongly spoken out against “wokeness” and resigned from his professional association because he opposed the organization’s DEI and anti-racism diversity statements.

Brockman spoke positively about Haidt and encouraged Epstein to meet him in 2011, praising his conservative leanings and connections with Edge. In the years after, Haidt appeared on multiple invite lists for private events organized by Brockman sent to Epstein.

Another prominent figure on one of those invite lists, Sam Harris is yet another atheist famous for his bigoted beliefs against Muslims and trans people. His name was frequently mentioned in the emails for his work adjacent to others in the Edge network, and was once personally invited to lunch by Epstein.

Michael Shermer, another scientist affiliated with Brockman who has faced accusations of sexual misconduct by Buzzfeed News, has also repeatedly attacked the rights of trans people in sports, trans kids, and the organization WPATH.

He seemed to have a friendly rivalry with new age guru Deepak Chopra, often having debates in email threads including Epstein, who was also invited to one of their public events. Robert Trivers once mentioned Shermer's name in an email to Epstein that later discussed trans science.

While not every far-right affiliate of the IDW social group had a close personal relationship to Epstein, they shared the same social spaces as him and clearly had no problems affiliating with their friends who were close to him. Other anti-trans figures associated with IDW making appearances in the emails include Matt Ridley and Jerry Coyne.

And there’s no doubt that the careers of the academics in the group greatly benefited from their associations with Epstein. As just one example, an email thread offering speakers for the defunct educational project NEURO.tv in 2015 included the names of Trivers, Dawkins, Krauss, Pinker, Haidt, and Harris.

Epstein’s connections to transphobic figures extended outside of the atheist circle around Krauss and Brockman. One of the central figures on the media end of “intellectual dark web” movement has been far-right pundit Bari Weiss, whose Substack was purchased last year by CBS for $150 million. Weiss’s wife and Free Press cofounder Nellie Bowles visited Epstein for a private meeting in 2018, scheduled just before his meeting with billionaire Leon Black.

Bowles has responded to criticism of her visit by arguing that she only did so in the service of reporting a story.

But that’s contradicted by the email trail which shows that she was connected to Epstein due to her friendship with Masha Bucher rather than a standard journalistic request for comment. Bucher is a venture capitalist who flirted with Epstein almost right up to his final arrest and appeared in the emails over a thousand times.

“I have a new friend who's fun and smart…Let me know if you'd like to meet her. No agenda. Just for fun. I like her a lot,” she wrote to Epstein in her pitch to arrange a meeting with Bowles.

Bari Weiss herself has connections to several other anti-trans Epstein associates as well. Last December, a new series of town halls hosted by CBS News and The Free Press included Steven Pinker. She also had Michael Shermer as a guest on her podcast, Honestly with Bari Weiss, which also once reposted an episode featuring Richard Dawkins as a guest from another TERF podcast called UnHerd.

And Weiss is also a founding member of the far-right unaccredited “University of Austin” (UATX), one of the flagship products of the “intellectual dark web” movement meant to push fascist ideas into the academic mainstream. The “university” has received criticism even from right-wing academics for suppressing academic dissent despite its supposed principles of “free expression and academic freedom.” UATX originally included Steven Pinker and Jonathan Haidt as advisors when it launched in 2021.

The files available on the DOJ website also provide more evidence of how Epstein also deeply, personally hated trans people – especially after he was sued by one trans survivor. These include many other examples of overt transphobia from Epstein and his associates.

Epstein himself used the slur “t****y” on multiple occasions up through 2018. On one occasion, he used the slur in a conversation with top Goldman Sachs lawyer and former Obama White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler. In 2010, American collector Al Seckel bragged to Epstein about removing allegations of sexual abuse including “transexual stuff [sic.]” from his Wikipedia page in order to launder his reputation.

A few years later, Epstein joked in one iMessage exchange that a picture of a woman sent to him “looks transgender.” He followed up with another misogynistic joke implying that women can’t be funny, showing how his transphobia and misogyny were linked.

The new revelations show that Epstein and his cadre of anti-trans influencers have used a collective form of DARVO – Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim-Offender – to paint trans people as predators and groomers, to distract from the wretched abuse of trans people by billionaires and other elites. This abuse comes both politically, through targeted attacks on our healthcare, civil rights, and dignity, as well as physically through sexual abuse and exploitation, especially of young trans people.

And we know it’s not just atheist billionaires and scientists pushing the anti-trans narrative. The role of far-right Christian billionaires and evangelical pastors in pushing anti-trans rhetoric and policies to the forefront of the MAGA agenda has been well documented.

Trans kids are twice as likely as cis kids to face sexual abuse, and far less likely to be believed when they report it. Abusers like Epstein intentionally target vulnerable children who have been ostracized by their families and by society as their victims.

When a Latina trans woman named Ava Cordero sued over Epstein’s raping her as a child, the same New York Post which smears trans people as pedophiles vigorously defended the billionaire pedophile in 2007 by running a front page story accusing Cordero of being an “Uppity T****y” who was trying to frame Epstein for money–a headline that the Post has since scrubbed from their website.

The story spread to other tabloids across the political spectrum such as Gawker and New York Magazine, as the media pushed the narrative that Epstein was the victim, and Cordero was in fact the abuser for daring to be a trans woman who was suing him – in other words, DARVO.

In 2009, Cordero lost a libel suit against the Post that argued for damages due to the tabloid’s hateful attacks. She later settled for a small sum from Epstein, but her story is a reminder that trans people have always been among the first to raise the alarm bells about abusive people. Epstein’s abuses could have been stopped far, far more quickly if the horrific truths Cordero bravely revealed were seen as a cause for action, not mockery and hatred.

Maybe next time, cis people should listen.

But now we know the truth. A conspiracy that would have sounded like satire 10 years ago, has all been concretely laid out to us in black and white: that the attacks on trans lives and communities have been driven by a cadre of billionaire child rapists who bankroll creepy “anti-woke” influencers to push bigotry with propaganda that covers up their wretched abuse.

So, the next time you see someone posting one of the anti-trans figures mentioned in this article, make sure to remind them who their friends are.

—Edited by David Forbes