Washington, D.C. — Congresswoman Madeleine Dean (PA-04) and Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD-08), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, demanded a federal investigation into former Bard College President Leon Botstein after reviewing an email in which Botstein asked Jeffrey Epstein about a young woman Epstein was trafficking: “Is [Jane Doe] for me, or are you keeping her for yourself.”
The letters — to Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel, and to Bard Board Chair Brandon Weber and Acting President Jonathan Becker — detail communications concerning a young foreign model and aspiring vocalist whom Epstein sent to Botstein in May 2014. They also question why DOJ exposed her name hundreds of times and released photographs showing her face while redacting Botstein’s email address.
“[T]his evidence, and the facts laid out in the Epstein files, surely meet and exceed the federal law enforcement standard for initiating a criminal investigation: the existence of evidence that a crime ‘may have occurred.’ These facts strongly indicate that a crime may have occurred. Yet, you have done nothing, and launched no investigation, about this incident which you and your staff must have known of for at least 18 months. In so doing, you have effectively permitted a potential co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein to stay in a position of power over young students, faculty and staff for an additional year at least,” the lawmakers wrote.
Emails and messages reviewed by the Committee show that Epstein groomed the young woman throughout 2014, offering advice and assistance with her education and career in the United States. After meeting Jane Doe in Paris, Epstein directed his assistant, Lesley Groff, to arrange private flights from her home country to destinations including Canada, New York, Florida, New Mexico and his island. A message to Epstein included a photograph of Jane Doe giving a woman, possibly Ghislaine Maxwell, a nude massage.
That May, Epstein sent Jane Doe to meet Botstein, ostensibly to assess her musical abilities and provide educational guidance. In an email from his Bard account, Botstein asked whether Jane Doe was “for me”. As he did with other survivors, Epstein relied on Botstein to assuage parental concerns about the sex offender, in this case by requesting orchestra tickets for the young woman’s parents to attend a Bard concert abroad. Epstein also asked Botstein to give them special treatment.
The evidence uncovered by the Committee contradicts the July 2025 DOJ–FBI memorandum and numerous follow-up claims by FBI Director Patel and Attorney General Blanche asserting that investigators found no evidence warranting an investigation of Epstein’s uncharged associates. Ranking Member Raskin demanded answers about why DOJ exposed the young woman’s identity while redacting Botstein’s email address, who directed that disparate treatment, and whom they were seeking to protect. Committee staff identified documents that still expose her name and provided the list separately to DOJ for redaction. The letters omit citations to DOJ documents to protect her identity.
Separately, more than a dozen whistleblowers have provided Committee staff information about a culture of sexual misconduct at Bard spanning decades. Multiple reports accuse Botstein of groping women and asking sexualized questions during tenure interviews. Whistleblowers described Botstein personally overseeing Title IX adjudications for the majority of his tenure as president and faculty being told that certain individuals accused of abuse were “protected by Botstein.”
In a letter to Bard’s leadership, Ranking Member Raskin sought records concerning Epstein’s use of the college to advance his trafficking activities and allegations from more than a dozen whistleblowers about sexual misconduct at Bard, including allegations that Botstein personally engaged in misconduct and intervened in Title IX proceedings to protect offenders. The Bard letter also details allegations involving a senior tenured professor who remains on campus, including that he invited a male student into his bed and supplied alcohol to the point of alcohol poisoning. That allegation appeared in a sworn federal complaint and was corroborated by whistleblower statements.
“Ultimately, we understand that your outrageous abandonment of your responsibilities is not about Leon Botstein. It is about protecting another individual who appears frequently in the Epstein files who also may have been a co-conspirator in Jeffrey Epstein’s brutal and sickening sex trafficking operation. And yet you continue to show the world that you would rather let a dozen, even 100, or 1,000 human sex traffickers go free than allow the possibility of an honest investigation of the conduct of one man,” the lawmakers concluded.
Rep. Madeleine Dean is a mother, grandmother, attorney, professor, former four-term member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, and U.S. Representative for the Fourth District of Pennsylvania.
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