When Noam Chomsky’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein initially came to light, the ancient academic played coy: “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally.”
By “met occasionally,” Chomsky was offering a euphemism for “helped me move around a quarter of a million dollars.” None of his financial dealings with Epstein at that point were public, but now they are.
Via Forbes:
Jeffrey Epstein paid $150,000 to Bard College president Leon Botstein and moved $270,000 for linguistics professor Noam Chomsky, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, shedding further light on the relationship between the late, disgraced financier and major academics, who met with him multiple times after he was a registered sex offender.
Via Business Insider, Chomsky claims his reliance on Epstein’s sage financial advice was all just a technicality (emphasis added):
New reporting from the outlet highlighted that beyond a group dinner with Woody Allen, Epstein helped Chomsky move large sums of money, which the academic said was for a “technicality” related to distributing funds from a previous marriage.
Chomsky confirmed to the outlet that in March 2018, he received $270,000 from a bank account associated with Epstein, but said it was only to reorganize his own funds, and “did not involve one penny from Epstein.
The academic said that after his previous wife died 15 years ago, he needed financial guidance for a “pure technicality.”
“Epstein gave me advice on how to transfer funds from one account of mine to another,” Chomsky told Insider in an emailed statement. “The simplest way was to pass it through his office.”
He also denied that he ever took money from Epstein. “Pure technicality,” Chomsky added. “No payments took place.”
Chomsky is a big fan of the “technicality” defense. When the initial exposé of his Epstein friendship came to light and he was pressed on his association with a known convicted child sex predator years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction, Chomsky brushed off the criticism by saying that Epstein and served his time and, as a result, “according U.S. laws and norms, that yields a clean slate.”
Yes, technically Epstein was a convicted sex predator, but he had served his time and was presumably a changed man, per Chomsky.
That’s called sophistry, and it’s what sociopaths caught in a morally compromising position always do to downplay their own culpability and escape accountability.
But what kind of morality would we expect from the guy who thinks the unvaccinated should be starved out through siege warfare?
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