The Biden White House is refusing to talk about recent revelations that CIA Director William Burns met with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in late 2014 during the former's time as President Barack Obama’s deputy secretary of state.
It was revealed over the weekend that Epstein, who was charged by the Justice Department with a slew of sex trafficking charges in 2019 but was found dead in his prison cell in what the medical examiner ruled a suicide, had met with Burns as the future CIA director prepared to exit the Obama administration in 2014.
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A reporter asked Tuesday if President Joe Biden had a reaction to Burns meeting with Epstein, who had served time in jail for sex crimes and was a registered sex offender.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded by saying that “I’m just not going to comment on that from here.”
The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that Burns, while serving as deputy secretary of state, met with Epstein in 2014, shortly before Burns went on to become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The outlet said a “lunch was planned that August at the office of law firm Steptoe & Johnson” in the nation’s capital, that Epstein “scheduled two evening appointments that September” with Burns at his townhouse in New York City, and that Epstein planned for his driver to take Burns to the airport after one of the meetings.
CIA spokeswoman Tammy Kupperman Thorp provided the Washington Examiner with a statement that did not mention Epstein by name.
“Director Burns recalls being introduced by a mutual friend in Washington, DC, and then met with him once briefly in New York City, about a decade ago as the Director was preparing to leave government service,” the CIA spokeswoman said. “The Director did not know anything about him, other than he was introduced as an expert in the financial services sector and offered general advice on transition to the private sector. The Director does not recall any further contact, including receiving a ride to the airport. They had no relationship.”
Burns had previously served as the U.S. ambassador to Jordan and Russia and led the Obama administration’s secretive “backchannel” during the lead-up to the Iran nuclear deal. After leaving the Obama administration, Burns then served as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace beginning in late 2014, with the group controversially receiving large amounts of China-linked funding and organizing a China trip for close to a dozen congressional staffers to meet with Communist Party operatives and leaders of Chinese front groups.
Senators pressed Burns on Carnegie’s involvement with the China-United States Exchange Foundation, linked to the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front, during his February 2021 confirmation hearing to be Biden’s CIA director. But his then-unknown meetings with Epstein did not come up.
Epstein was found dead in his jail cell early on the morning of Aug. 10, 2019, in what was ruled a suicide within days. In late October 2019, New York City’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Barbara Sampson, stood by her conclusion “that the cause of Mr. Epstein’s death was hanging and the manner of death was suicide." Despite “Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself” becoming a viral meme, then-Attorney General William Barr said in 2019, “I have seen nothing that undercuts the finding of the medical examiner that this was a suicide.”
Epstein was alleged to have “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls” at his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida, among other locations, between 2002 and 2005 and perhaps beyond. Prosecutors claimed Epstein built a “vast network of underage victims.”
Epstein’s arrest in July 2019 marked the second time he had been investigated for sex crimes. Alex Acosta, the former U.S. attorney for Southern Florida who later served as former President Donald Trump’s labor secretary, reached a controversial plea agreement in 2008 with Epstein’s attorneys.
Acosta, who resigned from the Trump administration in 2019 amid increased scrutiny of the Epstein deal he helped orchestrate, reached the agreement with Epstein’s attorneys, including Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, that allowed their client to plead guilty to two state-level prostitution solicitation charges related to a 17-year-old girl. This allowed Epstein to potentially dodge a slew of serious federal charges.
As a part of the deal, Epstein served just 13 months in a Palm Beach County jail, where he was allowed out on work release, was forced to pay restitution to certain victims, and was registered as a sex offender.
The agreement was struck before investigators had finished interviewing all the alleged victims and was kept under wraps for more than a year. Many of Epstein’s alleged victims didn't learn of it until he was out of jail. The FBI had been investigating allegations that Epstein had potentially sexually abused numerous minors in Florida.
The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded in November 2020 that Acosta and other federal prosecutors exercised “poor judgment” in their handling of 2008’s sweetheart deal with Epstein but said they found no professional misconduct.
The Justice Department in December 2021 moved to drop its case against two Bureau of Prison workers who admitted to falsifying logs and were accused of sleeping and browsing the internet instead of monitoring Epstein the night he allegedly killed himself in his prison cell.
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The quiet move was revealed one day after Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and close confidant, was found guilty by a jury on five of six federal counts related to the illegal sex trafficking of underage girls.
The Justice Department Inspector General's Office has declined to comment on its pending investigation into the Epstein saga.