timeline
Sep 18 2024 23andMe Board quits over plans to take DNA testing company private The departures leave just one sitting member of the board, its chair, Anne Wojcicki, who co-founded the genetics-testing company in 2006 and serves as its chief executive officer.
Wojcicki submitted a proposal in late July to take the company private, after earlier expressing interest in acquiring the company back in April. The board’s Special Committee rejected her proposal, noting it didn’t provide a premium to the closing price at the time of 40 cents per share and it lacked committed financing…In their letter Tuesday, however, the board members wrote, “After months of work, we have yet to receive from you a fully financed, fully diligenced, actionable proposal that is in the best interests of the non-affiliated shareholders.”
The company went public in 2021, when a special purpose acquisition company valued it at around $3.5 billion, CNBC reported. The company now has a market cap of under $200 million and closed at 34 cents per share on Tuesday.
Sep 18 2024 Elon Musk Is A National Security Risk. Musk’s now-deleted post questioning why no one has attempted to assassinate Joe Biden and Kamala Harris renews concerns over his work for the US government–and potential to inspire extremist violence.
Sep 14 2024 23andMe Will pay $30 Million to settle 2023 data breach lawsuit
Aug 29 2024 Twitter to leave San Francisco Sept 13 “X workers had not previously been notified regarding when they’d be relocating, according to a separate Fortune report. Musk in July said he planned to relocate X and rocket maker Space X, which he also owns, from California to Texas, citing his opposition to a recently enacted California law banning school districts from requiring that schools notify parents if their children ask to be referred to by a different pronoun.”
Jul 15 2024 Elon Musk hails Trump’s pick, JD Vance
Feb 16 2024 Navalny dies.
Feb 14 2024 Terrorists are Paying for Check Marks on [Musk’s] X/Twitter Report Says
“The report shows that X has accepted payments for subscriptions from entities barred from doing business in the United States, a potential violation of sanctions….has taken payments from accounts that include Hezbollah leaders, Houthi groups, and state-run media outlets in Iran and Russia”
Feb 13 2024 Musk Says Putin Can’t Lose in Ukraine, Opposes Senate Bill [funding Ukraine] “He was joined by Ron Johnson of WI, JD Vance of OH and Mike Lee of UT as well as Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate and David Sacks”
Dec 4 2023 23andMe Confirms Hackers Stole Ancestry Data on 6.9 million users “Because of the way that the DNA Relatives feature matches users with their relatives, by hacking into one individual account, the hackers were able to see the personal data of both the account holder as well as their relatives, which magnified the total number of 23andMe victims.”
Oct 6 2023 23andMe User Data Stolen in Targeted Attack on Ashkenazi Jews
Sep 12 2023. Russia’s Putin praises Elon Musk as an ‘outstanding person’ and ‘talented businessman’
Sep 8 2023. Ukraine is furious with Elon Musk for thwarting an attack on Russia’s navy
May 17 2023 Federal judge ruled Elon Musk could be served a subpoena regarding the USVI case against JPMorgan Chase about it sties to Jeffrey Epstein via Tesla.
May 17 2023 The WSJ runs a piece showing Epstein transferred $270,000 for Edge member Noam Chomsky.
May 11 2023 NYMAg runs: What Is It With Rich Guys Disappearing to Avoid Getting Served With Lawsuits? “Page, who with co-founder Sergey Brin still controls a majority of voting shares in Alphabet (né Google), is currently the eighth-richest man in the world — worth about $100 billion. But even that much money can’t make a federal case disappear. Prosecutors in the U.S. Virgin Islands, who are suing JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank for allegedly facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal activities, are trying to talk to Page about his relationship with the deceased sex trafficker. But they cannot find the guy. Maybe he’s on his superyacht? Or flying a fighter jet? Or hiding out in New Zealand? Or the Caribbean? Or Fiji?”
May 4 2023 Larry Page May Be Served in Jeffrey Epstein Case, Judge Rules. The U.S. Virgin Islands may serve legal papers on Larry Page as part of its lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase & Co over its ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a judge ruled on Thursday.
May 3 2023 Forbes reports based on (paywalled) Wall Street Journal reporting “After Epstein’s 2019 arrest, co-founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman said he had only met with Epstein to help raise funds for MIT, but new documents show Epstein had planned for Hoffman to visit his island twice and that Hoffman was once scheduled to stay at Epstein’s townhouse and attended a “breakfast party;” Hoffman told the Journal he visited the island just once to fundraise for MIT and said he is sorry for his “personal misjudgment” regarding Epstein.”
May 2 2023 Bloomberg reports “An artificial intelligence startup from LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman is rolling out a chatbot intended to serve as a supportive personal companion that gives friendly advice.”
Apr 28 2023 U.S. Virgin Islands issued subpoena to Elon Musk in Jeffrey Epstein lawsuit revealed in May 15 2023 court filing. “That filing said the Virgin Islands has tried unsuccessfully to serve Musk with the subpoena, which was issued on April 28, because of suspicion that Epstein “may have referred or attempted to refer” Musk as a client to JPMorgan.” “The Virgin Islands is suing JPMorgan for allegedly enabling and benefiting from Epstein’s trafficking of young women to his private island in the territory to be abused by him and others.”
That subpoena demands Musk turn over any documents showing communication involving him, JPMorgan and Epstein, as well as “all Documents reflecting or regarding Epstein’s involvement in human trafficking and/or his procurement of girls or women for consensual sex.”
Mar 30 2023 Sergey Brin is subpoenaed by the US Virgin islands in connection “to a lawsuit against JPMorgan over the bank’s relationship with late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein“reports Forbes in part based on linked paywalled WSJ reporting. “JPMorgan faces lawsuits from the Virgin Islands and an unnamed Epstein victim over the bank’s decision to keep Epstein as a client until 2013—five years after he was convicted in Florida for soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18” “The bank filed a lawsuit earlier this month against former investment banking executive Jes Staley, accusing him of concealing a personal relationship he had with Epstein—suggesting he was aware of and may have even been a participant in the alleged sex trafficking operation.”
Jan 4 2023 Regarding 2003+2004 Edge dinner attendee Sarah Kellen in The Daily Beast “Epstein, along with a trio of alleged co-conspirators—Kellen, Nadia Marcinkova, and Adrianna Mucinska—invoked their Fifth Amendment rights to remain silent when confronted with questions about Dershowitz getting massaged by underage girls, the documents say.”
Jan 4 2023 In the Daily Beast “Sjoberg, under questioning in 2016 by McCawley, revealed she’d met Copperfield at Epstein’s house, the new documents reveal. One of Epstein’s employees had called Sjoberg and said Copperfield would be at the moneyman’s mansion, then asked if she would like to join for dinner, according to her testimony.
“And what happened at that dinner, if anything?” McCawley asked. “He did some magic tricks,” Sjoberg said.
Sjoberg also said Copperfield asked if she was aware that “girls were getting paid to find other girls,” but that the magician didn’t specify whether the girls in question were underage.”
Dec 3 2022 Musk tweets “I am not expressing an opinion but did promise to conduct this poll. Should Assange and Snowden be pardoned?”
Dec 2 2022 Edward Snowden swears allegiance to Russia and receives passport, lawyer says
Nov 18 2022 Musk Teeters on the Edge After Another 1,200 Leave
Oct 28 2022 Musk Takes Control in 44Bn Takeover of Twitter. In MSN coverage of how the deal was financed: “Binance will invest $500 million for the stake, according to the terms of the agreement.” “Musk’s $33.5 billion equity commitment included his $4 billion Twitter stake and the $7.1 billion he had secured from equity investors such as Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.” “
The transaction will cost the 51-year-old billionaire approximately $27 billion in cash. According to Reuters, Musk has approximately $20 billion in cash after selling a portion of his Tesla stake in multiple transactions in November and December last year, as well as April and August this year.
Musk also owns 9.6 percent of Twitter stock, which is worth more than $4 billion. The $2 billion shortfall is expected to be covered by a stake sale in Tesla or SpaceX, or by a loan from banks secured by the stocks.”
Oct 17 2022 Fiona Hill: “Musk Is Transmitting a Message for Putin”
Oct 11 2022 Ian Bremmer, President of Eurasia Group tweeted: “Elon Musk told me he had spoken with Putin and the Kremlin directly about Ukraine. He also told me what the Kremlin’s red lines were.”
Oct 10 2022 Yuri Milner announces on twitter that his family renounced Russian citizenship in the past summer.
Oct 8 2022 As A Russian-built bridge linked to Crimea blows up, Ukraine’s offense continues.
Oct 6 2022 A Delaware judge has set a deadline of October 28 for Tesla CEO Elon Musk to make good on his promise to buy Twitter.
Oct 5 2022 Elon Musk tweets that he videoconferenced with Putin in 2021.
Oct 2 2022 Musk tweets a suggestion for Russia to get Ukrainian territory to achieve “peace.” He receives quick mocking response from Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials.
Sep 26 2022 Edward Snowden Is Granted Russian Citizenship
Sep 22 2022 Yandex assets in Finland frozen: Foreclosure hit Russian properties in Finland-a large amount of cash was found in Boris Rotenberg’s broken safe the bailout agency seized the holdings of Russia’s largest search engine company Yandex in Finland after the EU added the company’s founder and CEO Arkadi Volozh to the sanctions list….Volozh has already left his CEO position and board seat in the company. However, this has not exempted him from sanctions. Yandex as a company has not been put under sanctions…
Volozh is said to act as a leading representative of business life in the field, which is a significant source of income for the Russian government.
In addition, the EU notes that Yandex is responsible for favoring Russian state media and state narratives in its search results. It has also ranked or removed content critical of the country’s government and war of aggression….
At its peak, Yandex’s market value last November was a good 27 billion euros. Currently, trading in its stock has been suspended on the technology exchange Nasdaq.”
Sep 21 2022 German police raid villa linked to Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov. Usmanov was a major source of funds for Yuri Milner‘s DST Global investments in Facebook, twitter and more.
Sep 1 2022 Feds Search Park Ave High-Rise, Southampton Estate in Russian Oligarch (Viktor Vekselberg) Probe
Veksleberg was President of the Skolkovo Foundation which had a program with MIT. Esther Dyson was “a member of the work group for the development of the project aimed at creating the Skolkovo Innovation City” starting in Dec 2009.
Jul 26 2022 Columbus Dispatch publishes Peter Thiel is betting on J.D. Vance. Why does he care about Ohio’s U.S. Senate race?
“Thiel gave $10 million to the pro-Vance PAC Protect Ohio Values in the spring of 2021 when a Vance primary victory was far from assured…Thiel donated another $5 million to Vance’s PAC after Trump endorsed the candidate weeks before the May primary, according to Federal Election Commission filings.”
“The billionaire is also backing the president of his foundation, Blake Masters, in Arizona’s U.S. Senate race. Masters, who ran Thiel’s foundation until March, recently ran a campaign ad promoting border technology that’s financially linked to Thiel, the Arizona Republic reported. The ad calls for the U.S. to “militarize the border.”
Jun 16 2022 Musk, Tesla, SpaceX are Sued for Alleged Dogecoin Pyramid Scheme
Jun 13 2022 House of Representatives 1/6 Committee begins hearings.
Jun 2 2022 Why Wall Street Thinks Elon Musk Is Getting Out of the Twitter Deal: “I think Musk agreed to buy Twitter in a dramatically different market environment than we’re in today. Tesla has lost $400 billion in market capitalization.”
Jun 1 2022 Sheryl Sandberg steps down as Facebook COO. ” The firm would later assist the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.” Her statement (on Facebook, signing needed to read).
May 27 2022: Yahoo News Elon Musk sued by Twitter shareholders after accusations he’s trying to tank stock price “
It is the second lawsuit against the multibillionaire after a complaint was filed in Delaware Chancery Court earlier this month, with the Orlando Police Pension Fund saying that, under Delaware law, Mr Musk cannot complete the takeover until at least 2025 unless holders of two-thirds of shares not “owned” by him approved.
The lawsuit filed late Wednesday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California claims the billionaire Tesla CEO has sought to drive down Twitter’s stock price because he wants to walk away from the deal or negotiate a substantially lower purchase price.”
May 26 2022 Yahoo News: Elon Musk is dropping plans to partially fund his purchase of Twitter Inc. with a margin loan tied to his Tesla Inc. stake and increasing the size of the deal’s equity component to $33.5 billion.
May 13, 2022 Elon Musk Says His Deal to Buy Twitter is On Hold. CNN said:”Musk would owe Twitter a $1 billion breakup fee if he were to cancel the deal.”
Apr 28, 2022 CNN posts: “Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol Hill insurrection, told reporters Thursday that the committee will hold eight hearings spread out through the month of June.”
Apr 25 2022 Elon Musk and the twitter Board agree he will buy twitter and take it private.
Apr 1 2022 Silicon Valley and Russian money A Putin youth leader-turned-investor once touted connections to wealthy Russians. Now she denies knowing ‘anyone.’ “Masha Bucher, a former teen leader of Russian President Vladmir Putin’s youth organization, Nashi, had moved to San Francisco and remade herself as an expert in media relations. But what really set her apart were her purported connections to powerful financial backers abroad.
In fundraising pitches under her maiden name, Masha Drokova, (see 2017 on timeline for story in which she repped Jeffrey Epstein) she touted her ties to wealthy Russians, including billionaires Alexander Mamut, whom she listed as an investor in a Day One fund, and a Russian conglomerate owned by Vladimir Yevtushenkov, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
An earlier Russian emigre, Yuri Milner, has acknowledged taking money from a government-controlled bank when he invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Facebook and Twitter more than a decade ago. But a spokesperson said that Milner hasn’t taken any money from Russian investors since 2011 and that he repaid an investment from the government-controlled VTB Bank in 2014, the year the bank was first sanctioned by the United States…
Y Combinator, a major Silicon Valley start-up incubator, put out a notice this week requiring all potential investors to confirm that they are not a target of U.S. sanctions and that all “direct or indirect” investment partners are also not targets of U.S. sanctions. The group said it was tightening its standards in light of Russia’s invasion…
The opacity of Russian money in Silicon Valley has made it harder for start-up founders, venture capitalists and even federal officials to determine the penetration by the Kremlin and its allies into the American start-up ecosystem. Unlike Saudi Arabia, which investsthrough prominent state-backed funds, there are only a handful of venture capital funds with overt ties to Russia. Instead, money is more likely to flow indirectly into companies or funds that then invest in venture capital firms, said Jim Lewis, director at the strategic technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. That makes it difficult for companies to know if they are getting funding from Russian oligarchs or Russian government sources.In interviews with The Post, three partners at leading venture capital firms couldn’t say whether their funds included money from Russia. Even though they were aware of no direct investment from Russian oligarchs, they couldn’t rule out the possibility that Russian investors had directed money into funds that invest in their firms. The three spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.
“The fact that tracks are hidden with the money makes it more difficult to track,” Lewis said. “They’re going to have to spend a bit more time peeling back the layers of where the money comes from.”
Some Russian investments have raised red flags in the Valley before, particularly around technologies with national security implications, according to officials and investors who spoke on the condition of anonymity. In some cases, venture capital firms have taken extra steps to vet sensitive technology deals that include Russian investors, the officials and investors said.
Some companies with known Russian ties have taken steps to de-emphasize those links. The website of Redline Capital Management, a London-based venture capital firm, previously noted that its “funds originate from Mr. Vladimir Evtushenkov,” an alternate spelling for Yevtushenkov, the billionaire founder of Russian telecom and media conglomerate Sistema.
Bucher worked at Runa and then moved to the United States to help Beloussov pursue new technology projects. She first came on a visa backed by the Russia-friendly investor Esther Dyson. Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, endorsed her admission to the United States in a letter to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service in May 2015, calling her departure from Nashi “brave.”
In an email this week, McFaul said while he hadn’t followed her career in the United States, her “defection from Nashi, which was when I was serving in Moscow, generated attention — good attention in my view — about the Kremlin’s role in sponsoring Nashi.”
“I liked her and thought she deserved a chance to live in the U.S.,” Dyson told The Post.
Bucher leveraged her media skills and network into her own venture company, Day One. In seeking limited partner investors in Day One funds, she told one target that others investing included Mamut through his firm, according to a pitch document from Bucher obtained by The Post. The billionaire and former Kremlin adviser had recently taken control of blogging platform LiveJournal. Another person Bucher listed as an investor in the same fundraising email told The Post that he was pitched by Bucher but never actually invested.
She emailed a slide deck presentation to another possible limited partner that included claims she had led media efforts for science education start-up MEL Science and “made 10+ introductions to investors that helped to close $2.5 million round led by Sistema Venture Capital,” owned by a Yevtushenkov company that has the biggest stake in Russia’s largest mobile telecom carrier.
She said in a 2019 magazine interview that Day One’s first investor was Dmitry Eremeev, a Russian entrepreneur who oversees FIX, a holding company, and Bank 131, an online banking start-up. Both are based in Kazan, Russia, according to their websites.
Mamut could not be reached for comment. Yevtushenkov’s principal company did not respond to questions. Eremeev did not respond to a request for comment; Bucher told The Post he had Maltese citizenship.
Day One’s portfolio companies include search engines DuckDuckGo and You.com, as well as Worldcoin, which gives people its new cryptocurrency token in exchange for scanning their retinas.
Mar 28 2022 Eric Schmidt was an Epstein-funded Edge dinner attendee. There is a photo of him at one dinner next to Epstein trafficker Kelly Bovino.(see Feb 272003 Politico reported “A foundation controlled by Eric Schmidt, the multi-billionaire former CEO of Google, has played an extraordinary, albeit private, role in shaping the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy over the past year.”
“And his charity arm, Schmidt Futures, indirectly paid the salaries of two science-office employees, including, for six weeks, that of the current chief of staff, Marc Aidinoff, who is now one of the most senior officials in the office following Lander’s resignation in February.”
““I and others on the legal team had been noticing a large number of staff with financial connections to Schmidt Futures and were increasingly concerned about the influence this organization was able to have through these individuals,” Wallace, who is now being represented by the Government Accountability Project as a whistleblower, told POLITICO. GAP and Wallace formally filed a whistleblower complaint in early March.“
Mar 14 2022 Edge dinner attendee (and meeter of Epstein, see below) Elon Musk purchased 9.2% of twitter becoming its biggest shareholder. More about his history of legal problems with his tweets, his statements about free speech being threatened on twitter and notable figures banned from twitter including Donald Trump and Steve Bannon.
Mar 7 2022 Esther Dyson resigns from the Board of Yandex where she had recently been Chairperson of Nominating CommitteeMember of Compensation, Investment, Corporate Governance Committees
Mar 4 2022 Putin blocks access to Facebook inside Russia
Feb 25 2022 MIT abandons Russian high-tech campus partnership in light of Ukraine invasion
Feb 24 2022 Russia invades Ukraine
Feb 19 2022 Jeffrey Epstein associate Jean Luc Brunel found dead by suicide in prison
Feb 15 2022 Prince Andrew settles law suit from Virginia Giuffre.
Feb 10 2022 MIT President Rafael Reif, who oversaw MIT during funding from and many campus meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, resigns.
Feb 7 2022 Peter Thiel announces he is leaving Facebook’s Board where he has been since 2005. “Thiel is the largest donor to a political action committee supporting JD Vance…Thiel gave $10 million to the Vance PAC last March, according to Federal Election Commission filings.” “A month after giving to Vance, Thiel wrote a second $10 million check for a new PAC supporting the Arizona senate candidacy of Republican Blake Masters, who is a longtime Thiel aide and served as the cowriter on his book, Zero to One.“”[Masters] claimed — without evidence — that Facebook “threw the election for Biden” “according to the person close to Thiel, his priority will be to advance the Trump agenda ahead of the November election.”
Feb 7 2022 Biden cabinet member running Science and Tech, and Edge member Eric Lander (who met with Epstein on Harvard’s campus) resigns after internal White House investigation showed that he bullied and demeaned subordinates. “Nine of those current and former OSTP staffers said Lander yelled and sometimes made people feel humiliated in front of their peers. Most were granted anonymity because they feared retaliation from Lander.”
“He apologized in his confirmation hearing last spring for “understating” the role of two women scientists in a 2016 essay on the discovery of CRISPR gene-editing technology.”
An earlier article noted, “At his April nomination hearing, Lander called Epstein an “abhorrent individual” and said he “chose to have no association whatsoever with him,” including never receiving funding from the financier.” But Lander did not make any statement I am aware of, leaving Epstein fended Edge or disavowing the group or its leader John Brockman.
Feb 3 2022 Facebook‘s $232 billion fall sets record for largest one-day value drop in stock market history
Feb 2 2022 Jeff Zucker announced his resignation from CNN. Rolling Stone reported that the Zucker said his Cravath, Swaine & Moore investigation for Warner Media into Chris Cuomo following his firing for advising his brother Gov Andrew Cuomo who stood accused of sexual harassment. RS also reported that Zucker lied in his resignation memo about his affair with Allison Gollust who worked under Zucker at NBC, then as Gov Cuomo’s communications director then again under Zucker at CNN where she eventually became CNN Worldwide’s CMO and a direct Zucker report. RS reports the affair began in the 90s. “Facing termination, Zucker resigned and is not poised to receive any severance.” Also, “As Andrew sparred on a daily basis with then-President Trump over Covid messaging, the couple provided the governor with talking points on how to respond to the president’s criticisms of the New York crisis.” During his years at NBC Zucker hired Donald Trump and put The Apprentice on the air.
Dec 29 2021 Ghislaine Maxwell convicted of 5 criminal counts including sex-trafficking with Jeffrey Epstein. She could face up to 40 years for sex-trafficking. Her sisters Christine and Isabel Maxwell were there when the verdict was read. Both ran start up Magellen in web 1.0 in Silicon Valley which they sold to Excite. Michael Wolff’s book Burn Rate details his web 1.0 attempt to sell his start up to them.
Dec 29 2021 Federal Judges Order Release of Jeffrey Epstein Civil Settlement at Issue in Lawsuit Against Prince Andrew
Dec 28 2021 Elon Musk sells a billion in Tesla shares
Nov 30 2021 David Marcus steps down from Facebook Fintech. He was formerly Facebook’s blockchain group and Libra, Facebook’s effort at a currency. He was previously the President in Paypal and worked on cryptocurrency.
Nov 29 2021 Jack Dorsey resigns as twitter CEO.
Nov 28 2021 Ghislaine Maxwell Sex-Trafficking Trial Begins
Nov 1 2021 Barclays CEO Jes Staley Steps Down After UK Regulators Investigate Ties to Jeffrey Epstein
“Staley visited Epstein at his Palm Beach office, where he was allowed to serve some of his time, the New York Times reported.” “Under his contract, Staley is entitled to benefits and a payout worth about $3.3 million, as well as moving expenses to the United States, Barclays said.”
Oct 20 2021 Plos One Retracts [Academic] Article Tied to MIT and Jeffrey Epstein Published report on the fraudulent food computer research, which claimed a device could grow food in challenging climates, done at the MIT Media Lab is withdrawn as former researcher on the project sues MIT. “The trailblazing open-access journal took the action as a former MIT scientist who once left the research project, Babek Babakinejad, filed a lawsuit in state court in Massachusetts accusing MIT of forcing him out of his job after he tried within the institution to raise warnings about the claims MIT was making about the purported invention.” “ Dr. Babakinejad said MIT officials knew it didn’t work as claimed but maintained the ruse to encourage Epstein and other donors.”
Sep 21 2021 Bill Gates has a hard time answering Judy Woodruff’s questions about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein on News Hour. “Is there a lesson for you, for anyone else looking at this? Well, he’s dead…”
Sep 20 2021 Prince Andrew is served in Giuffre v Prince Andrew
Sep 20 2021 In new court documents a former model accuses Leon Black of raping her in Jeffrey Epstein’s NYC apartment.
Sep 15 2021 “An inspector was called and crews remained at the scene for fire watch until 6:30 a.m. Wednesday.
“That structure is done. It’s probably gonna need to be rebuilt,” said Yarbrough, who didn’t have a damage cost estimate for the fire.
Broken windows could be seen from the front of the main home on Wednesday morning.
The residence is owned by either Google co-founder Larry Page or Google itself, according to a neighbor, who requested anonymity to protect their privacy. The home is being used as an office by a small team of workers. Many vehicles are often parked on the street outside of the home, which sees no activity at night.” Palo Alto Online
Sep 7 2021 Weeks after firing Joi Ito from being the Chief Digital Officer, Japan’s Prime Minister names him a member of the group of experts creating it. This was not covered in the English-speaking press much or at all (I haven’t found an article in English yet…the following is translated via google). “Digital Agency Experts Meeting established To the first meeting this month Rakuten Mikitani President
The Digital Agency has set up a meeting of experts to formulate a new priority plan for realizing a digital society, and will hold its first meeting later this month to start discussions.
The “Digital Society Concept Conference” established by the Digital Agency will be chaired by Jun Murai, a professor at Keio University, who is a member of the Special Advisor to the Cabinet.
In addition to Mr. Hiroshi Mikitani, the president of Rakuten Group, and Governor Hirai of Tottori Prefecture, who is the chairman of the National Governors’ Association, IT-related matters were initially considered to be appointed as the top “digital supervisor” of the Digital Agency. Members include Joi Ito, co-founder and director of the company’s Digital Garage.
The Digital Agency will hold its first meeting of experts this month to begin consideration for the formulation of a new priority plan for the realization of a digital society.”
Aug 18 2021 Japan’s Prime Minister tried to hire Joi Ito to run the country’s first digital agency then had to fire him from that appointment.
Aug 11 2021 Oregon Attorney General settles sexual harassment case with L Brands, Les Wexner’s holding company that owns Victoria Secret. “L Brands board of directors failed to investigate former CEO and Chairman Emeritus Leslie Wexner’s close personal ties with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and ignored a widespread and pervasive culture of sexual harassment at the company.”
Aug 10 2021 Celine Halioua posts first-person account of sexual harassment by Aubrey de Grey and she and Laura Deming post that he is a serial sexual predator including with minors in order to warn other women. de Grey works in the field of aging/longevity and attended Epstein-funded Edge Billionaire dinners (which took place during TED) and gave a TED talk.
Aug 9 2021 Giuffre, trafficked by Epstein, brings a suit against Prince Andrew. She is repped by David Boies and the case is publicized across major media including People magazine.
Aug 9 2021 Leon Black tried to Sex-Traffick Russian Model for Epstein: Lawsuit
Aug 9 2021 Epstein fund for victims announces it is ceasing operation and that over 225 people made claims of rape and abuse through Epstein and his trafficking.
Aug 6 2021 Larry Page has gotten New Zealand residency by having enough money to invest there.
Aug 5 2021 In the closing days of the Tokyo Olympics, the Japanese government announces it will hire Joi Ito to run the government’s digital agency beginning Sept 1 2021 despite his being forced to resign from MIT and the Boards of the MacArthur Foundation, NYTimes and the Knight Foundation for taking money from Jeffrey Epstein for MIT and his own fund and lying about it. Earlier entries in this timeline show he was at one of the first, small Edge dinners with Epstein and was told about who and what Epstein was by Sarah Szalavitz at MIT before choosing to meet with him and bring this serial rapist and trafficker to a college campus.
Aug 4 2021 Anderson Cooper interviews Bill Gates on CNN and asks him about Epstein.
Aug 2 2021 Bill and Melinda Gates divorced finalized.
Jul 20 2021 Tom Barrack has been arrested and charged with illegally lobbying trump on behalf of UAE. Barrack is an entry in Jeffrey Epstein’s financial black book. (HT @xeni)
Jul 20 2021 Bezos has his space outing. Lots of headlines. He also announces he’s giving $100 Million each to Van Jones and Jose Andreas. Van Jones is part of the criminal justice project that includes Trump ally, donor and Patriots owner Robert Kraft and wife of Brooklyn Nets co-owner Clara Wu Tsai.
Jul 19 2021 Amazon announces it’s banning accounts linked with Pegasus spyware / NSO group infrastructure as new research was released yesterday showing the software was used to spy on many journalists
Jul 13 2021 Leslie Wexner is selling $2 billion in shares he controls in L Brands. Columbus Dispatch covers the sale of most of his remaining shares of L Brands (“Once the sale is complete, the Wexners will control 5 million shares, or about 1.8% of the company’s stock. Before the sale, the couple controlled 12.7% of the shares, according to a regulatory filing.”) “This is the third sale of shares this year.”
Jul 7 2021 NYTimes Bill Gates Can Remove Melinda French Gates From Foundation
Jul 1 2021 Edge dinner attendee Richard Branson announces he will go to space Jul 11 2021 from New Mexico via Virgin Galactic that went public 2019. Virgin Atlantic filed for bankruptcy Aug 5 2020.
Jun 30 2021 James Franco settles class action lawsuit about his coercing students to do explicit sex scenes on camera. This same day Cosby was unexpectedly released from prison and the Trump Org was indicted by New York.
Jun 23 2021 Warren Buffet resigns from the Gates Foundation
Jun 16 2021 Epstein survivor Virginia Roberts testifies against modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel in a Paris court.
Jun 8 2021 Vanity Fair runs a piece on Les Wexner‘s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. He was, for a long time, the only visible source of Epstein’s wealth and the source of his NY house.
Jun 7 2021 Edge dinner regular Bezos announces he will go to space with his brother on Blue origin on July 20 2021
June 1 2021 Guzel Ganieva sues Leon Black in NY State. “Guzel Ganieva, a former model [and Russian immigrant] who went on to earn a business degree from Columbia and attended law school, claims that Black, former CEO of Apollo Global Management, was a predator who forced sadistic sexual acts on her without her consent, then demanded she sign a non-disclosure agreement, telling her he would destroy her if she ever told anyone about his conduct, according the suit.
May 27 2021. Jeff Bezos announces the specific date he’ll step down as Amazon’s CEO: July 5 2021.
May 18 2021 In one suit women claimed between 2010 and 2016 women at the company filed 238 complaints with the Microsoft HR department, of which 108 were about sexual harassment and 118 were gender discrimination. Just one of the 118 gender discrimination allegations were found proven.”
May 16 2021 Brex credit card start up “A year after launching the company, Brex was valued at more than $1 billion, thanks to major early investments that included $50 million from Y Combinator and another $125 million from a group led by investment firms Greenoaks Capital and [Yuri Milner‘s] DST Global.”
May 16 2021 WSJ reports Bill Gates left the MSFT Board amid probe into prior relationship with staffer
May 16 2021 NYT reports on Bill Gates affair with employee, ongoing pursuit of women employees, decision to have his money manager settle his sexual harassment claim confidentially, Melinda’s decision to start working with a divorce lawyer when reporting in NYT appeared about Bill’s friendship with Epstein and regular attendance at dinners at Epstein’s home. “Gates and French Gates met at work. He was technically her boss. He ran Microsoft, and she began working there in 1987 as a product manager the year after she graduated from college.”
May 16 2021 Jeffrey Epstein gave Bill Gates Advice on How to End “Toxic Marriage”
May 12 2021 Judge sets Ghislaine Maxwell trial date for Nov 29 2021
May 7 2021
Jeff Bezos sells off 5B of Amazon stock, signals more coming
HT Ellen Pao “under a pre-arranged trading plan, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings. He plans to sell as many as 2 million shares, according to a separate filing.”
“Jeff Bezos sold $2.4 billion of Amazon.com stock, bringing the amount he’s unloaded this week to details MSFT Epstein connections
May 4 2021
Bill and Melinda Gates announce divorce
Apr 23 2021
US Judge Presses for July Trial, as Ghislaine Maxwell Pleads Not Guilty to New Sex-Trafficking Charges
Apr 22 2021
Eric Schmidt appt Chair of Board of Broad Inst (Epstein meetee/Edge Biden appointee still in committee Eric Landers old org)
Apr 20 2021 Demolition begins on Jeffrey Epstein‘s Palm Beach estate
April 2 2021 Developer of an app/business on the early Facebook platform Numair Faraz posts publicly stating he witnessed child rape committed by an early Facebook corporate officer and has spoken to the FBI about it.
Mar 26, 2021 Harvard announces it will close Epstein-funded PED run by Director Martin Nowak “as soon as it is feasible.” Nowak loses some privileges for a couple of years but “will continue to teach undergraduate courses.”
Mar 26 2021
Leon Black steps down from MoMa Board
Mar 22 2021 Leon Black steps down from Apollo Board where he had been Chairman
Mar 18 2021
Les Wexner + Abigail Wexner step down from L Brands Board
Mar 11 2021 Jeffrey Epstein‘s NY mansion sells for $51 million. Bought by former Goldman Sachs exec Michael Daffey. First reported by Business Insider.
Feb 13 2021 Elon Musk invites Vladimir Putin to have a public conversation with him on Clubhouse.
Feb 4 2021
Genetic testing firm 23andMe is going public via a SPAC backed by Richard Branson
Feb 2 2021 Jeff Zucker steps down from CNN
Feb 2 2021 Jeff Bezos stepping down from Amazon. Will remain Executive Chair.
Jan 25 2021
Leon Black steps down as CEO of Apollo
Jan 25 2021 Media reports Leon Black paid Jeffrey Epstein $158 million between 2012-2017, Will remain Chairman of Apollo.
Jan 13 2021 Branson’s Necker Island re-opens to tourists.
Nov 15 2021 Wilbur Ross sells DC home for $13 million to Peter Thiel. Ross was Trump’s Secretary of Commerce and previously the Vice Chair of the Russian Bank of Cyprus. “Ross was appointed vice-chairman at the bank after his investment in 2014, a post he shared with a deposit holder-turned-shareholder, Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, referred to in Russian media as a former KGB official and Putin ally“. “One of Ross’s first big decisions at the bank was the appointment of former Deutsche Bank chief executive Josef Ackermann as chairman”
In the March 2017 Justsecurity.org piece Following the Money: Russia, Cyprus, and the Trump Team’s Odd Business Dealings “Cyprus has a longstanding reputation as the place Russians go when they need to stash or launder large amounts of money with no questions asked.”
Nov 9 2020 Former Google CEO, and Edge dinner attendee Eric Schmidt applies to become a citizen of Cyprus
Nov 4 2020
Jeff Bezos sells 10BN of Amazon stock
Oct 24 2020 Brock Pierce announces he is running for President “appearing on the ballot in Alaska and 15 other states.”
Oct 12 2020 The Billionaire Who Stood by Jeffrey Epstein details the closer than asserted relationship between Epstein and Leon Black. Payments from Black to Epstein surfaced in an internal Deutsche Bank report provided to regulators who fined DB. Among payments included were 22.5million to Plan D the company that owned Epstein’s jet (2017) and a $10 million donation to Epstein’s Gratitude America Foundation (2015).
Sep 25 2020 [Alphabet] Google‘s owner to pay $310 million to settle misconduct claims connected to Android creator [Andy Rubin]
Aug 5 2020 Edge-dinner attendee and Larry Page’s best man Richard Branson’s Virgin Airlines declares bankruptcy.
Jul 2 2020
Ghislaine Maxwell is arrested in Bradford New Hampshire.
Jun 5 2020 Alexis Ohanian steps down from Reddit Board of Directors, asks for his seat to be filled by a Black person.
Jun 13 2020 Crisis Text CEO Nancy Lublin resigns from post and the Board after allegations of racism and a toxic work environment from her staff. Crisis text has funding from Melina Gates, Bill Gates, Pierre Omidyar, and Reid Hoffman. The company runs a text help line for mental health and has partnerships with major tech companies.
May 1 2020 Harvard releases a report on its relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Coverage says: “Jeffrey Epstein visited Harvard University’s campus more than 40 times after his 2008 sex crimes conviction and was given his own office and unfettered access to a research center he helped establish.” Places Epstein fundee Martin Nowak, who ran the Epstein program titled P.E.D. Harvard Crimson reported: “Epstein likely made more than 40 visits to PED’s offices at One Brattle Square between 2010 and 2018″…and “played an indirect but significant role” in facilitating a grant from the John Templeton Foundation to PED in 2015.”
According to a footnote in the report: A number of the Harvard faculty members we interviewed also acknowledged that they visited Epstein at his homes in New York, Florida, New Mexico or the Virgin Islands, visited him in jail or on work release, or traveled on one of his planes, the report noted in a footnote, according to CNBC.”
Apr 20 2020 Richard Branson Says He Needs A Government Loan To Keep Virgin Atlantic Afloat And Uses Private Island As Collateral
Mar 31 2020 Other witnesses that I had interviewed had also told me of the friendship between Epstein and Copperfield and how their private islands were located close enough for them to visit each other on occasion, Edwards writes. Excerpt from Brad Edwards book Relentless Pursuit, just out now about Epstein. In the Daily Beast piece about the book, “The magician was a regular caller to the [Epstein] Palm Beach mansion and one person Edwards sought to interview as a potential witness to Epstein’s sex-trafficking scheme.”
Mar 13 2020 Bill Gates steps down from Microsoft Board
Feb 20 2020
Les Wexner steps down as CEO from L Brands
Feb 5 2020 D. E. Shaw Managing Director Max Stone texting Daniel Michalow while Michalow was at Davos “Any photos from lunch? And did Eric Schmidt have any of his 18-year-old girlfriends with him?Text surfaced as part of legal fight between D. E. Shaw and Michalow. Reported in Daily Beast which also states Schmidt invested in D.E. Shaw in 2015 and owns 20% of the fund.
Feb 5 2020
LinkedIn (now owned by MSFT) CEO Jeff Weiner steps down
Jan 27 2020 Federal prosecutors in NY and FBI ask to interview Prince Andrew as part of Epstein investigation
Jan 21 2020
Jeff Bezos‘ phone hacked by MbS in story related to an affair he was having with Lauren Sanchez and “his security team [looking] to uncover how the CEO’s private texts were obtained by the supermarket tabloid, which was owned by American Media Inc (AMI). AMI owns the National Enquirer and is known for “catch and kill” related to Donald Trump.
Jan 10 2020 MIT releases a report on its relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. MIT puts mechanical engineering prof Seth Lloyd on paid leave. “Professor Lloyd knew that donations from Epstein would be controversial and that MIT might reject them, the report concluded. We conclude that, in concert with Epstein, he purposefully decided not to alert the Institute to Epstein’s criminal record, choosing instead to allow mid-level administrators to process the donations without any formal discussion or diligence concerning Epstein.” Report states “In total, Epstein made 10 donations to MIT between 2002 and 2017 and visited the school nine times.”
“Epstein and Lloyd also had a personal relationship, and the professor attended a 2007 gathering on his private island, Little St. James. In November, Lloyd even began his quantum computing class with a monologue about his relationship with Epstein prompting students to demand his resignation.”
“The report also cleared MIT’s president, L. Rafael Reif, of wrongdoing, saying that the president was unaware of donations by Epstein and that he had no role in garnering funds for the schools prestigious Media Lab.”
Jan 10 2020 Alphabet legal chief David Drummond steps down “following accusations of inappropriate relationships with employees.” Daily Mail coverage: “Blakely claims that Drummond later dumped her and had an affair with another co-worker, as well as his assistant. In 2014, she says Drummond compared himself to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, whose promiscuity has been well-documented, and said that like him, it was his ‘privilege’ to live how he wanted to.”
Dec 24 2019 Travis Kalanick steps down from Uber’s Board. Has sold practically all shares.
Dec 4 2019
Sergei and Larry step down from Alphabet
Dec 13 2019 Harvard‘s George Church is developing a dating app to “reduce genetic disease” criticized as eugenics.
Dec 3 2019
Terrible Zuckerberg interview w Gayle King inside home
Nov 20 2019
Terrible Prince Andrew interview on Epstein
Nov 20 2019 Josh Browder (son of Bill Browder) who runs a Peter-Thiel funded start up to automate legal ticket fighting processes tweets “Every entrepreneur should take money from @dayonevc and @mashadrokova. Every day I’m surprised by just how amazing they are.”
Oct 12 2019
Bill Gates met with Jeffrey Epstein Many Times Despite His Past
Oct 8 2019 Senate Report Finds Russians Used Social Media Mostly to Target Race in 2016
Oct 5 2019
Melinda Gates pledges 1 Billion to “promote gender equity”
(HT Sarah Szalavitz)
Sept 26 2019 Buzzfeed runs a piece on John Brockman‘s Edge and how it was funded by Epstein, its dinners attended by Epstein and possible co-conspirator Sarah Kellen and how few of the science or tech folks in Edge have left or said anything to condemn the Epstein connection
Sep 12 2019 Axios reports Reid Hoffman and Jeffrey Epstein received orbs fabricated by Neri Oxman at the MIT Media Lab, identical to the orbs MIT gave out as Disobedience Awards to social justice figures, a project funded by Reid Hoffman. Axios reports Hoffman blames his Epstein contact at this dinner on Joi Ito for vouching for Epstein.
Sep 12 2019 MIT President Rafael Reif puts out letter admitting he knew about Jeffrey Epstein‘s donations to MIT
Sep 10 2019
Jack Ma steps down from Alibaba
Sep 8 2019 Lessig writes a post defending Joi Ito and arguing it was ok for Joi to take money from crimes (including child rape and trafficking) committed by Epstein if it was done anonymously and the source couldn’t have been discovered. “And so now Joi is gone. Not dead. Not destroyed. I can’t imagine the creative greatness that the next life of this sweet soul will produce. It will be greatness beyond measure, no doubt, again.”
Sep 8 2019
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman defended a former MIT official who accepted donations from Jeffrey Epstein. Reif said he had signed a gift thank you letter for a donation for Seth Lloyd. “Although I do not recall it, it does bear my signature.” Reif blames Joi Ito’s assessment of Epstein and says MIT will donate the money received from Epstein to a charity benefitting his survivors or other survivors of sexual abuse and rape.
Sept 7 2019
Joi Ito resigns from MIT Media Lab
(and following this NYT Board, Macarthur Board, Knight Foundation Board)
Sept 5 2019 [Nicholas Negroponte] at an all-hands MIT Media Lab meeting “said he had recommended that Ito take Epstein’s money. If you wind back the clock, he added, I would still say, Take it. And he repeated, more emphatically, ˜Take it. …”A woman in the front row began crying. Kate Darling, a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab, shouted, “Nicholas, shut up!â Negroponte responded that he would not shut up and that he had founded the Lab, to which Darling said, We’ve been cleaning up your messes for the past eight years.
Sept 3 2019 News reports that Alphabet legal chief David Drummond marries employee
Sept 2 2019 New Yorker runs Ronan Farrow piece How An Elite University Research Center Concealed Its Relationship With Jeffrey Epstein about MIT and especially Joi Ito‘s role in this at the Media Lab. Also “Epstein was credited with securing at least $7.5 million in donations for the lab, including two million dollars from [Bill] Gates and $5.5 million from [Leon] Black, gifts the e-mails describe as directed by Epstein or made at his behest.”
Aug 26 2019
No one from current major investors in 23andme remain on the Board including Esther Dyson observes a puzzled healthcare tech consultant
Aug 26 2019 wesupportjoi petition was drafted and signed by community members and many Edge members in the following days, including Stewart Brand, Danny Hillis and Linda Stone, all Edge Billionaire Dinner attendees. Edge was reported a month later to have been funded by Epstein. Archived copy.
Aug 20 2019 Edge member and wesupportJoi.com Ito petition signer Stewart Brand posts at Ethan Zuckerman on twitter to defend Marvin Minsky and tell Ethan “Minsky is a leading sentence in your letter. He can’t respond.” and “Minsky had zero involvement in Epstein’s crimes. Ask his wife Gloria who was always with him. this is nuts.” Ethan Zuckerman replied, “My decision had nothing to do with Minsky Stewart. When I asked Joi about Minsky I learned a great deal about Joi’s personal involvement with Epstein. I didn’t know Minsky well and have no insight into what did or didn’t happen.”
Aug 22 2019 Evgeny Morozov writes in The New Republic “A close analysis of Edge Foundation’s (publicly available) financial statements suggests that, between 2001 and 2015, it has received $638,000 from Epstein’s various foundations. In many of those years, Epstein was Edge’s sole donor.” Morozov renounces his relationship with Brockman and Edge and encourages others to do the same. I’ve seen less than a handful of these public renunciations as of Feb 2022.
Aug 21 2019 Ethan Zuckerman resigns from the MIT Media Lab over Joi Ito and the Lab’s Epstein ties
Aug 19 2019 Reported that Bill Gates science advisor Boris Nikolic is an executor named in Jeffrey Epstein’s will.
Aug 16 2019 Court documents unsealed that include a Virginia Roberts Giuffre deposition that name accused traffickers/rapists including MIT Professor and Edge participant Marvin Minsky (as well as Prince Andrew, Gov Bill Richardson, Glenn Dubin and Jean-Luc Brunel)
Aug 13 2019 FBI seized computers in raid at Jeffrey Epstein’s Virgin Island home
Aug 10 2019 Sarah Szalavitz former MIT Media Lab Fellow to resigned Media Lab Dir Ethan Zuckerman: “it’d also be fantastic to see both institutions remedy a secondary impact of this situation. Because of Epstein’s largesse, even fewer women were included in for eg the original TED & Edge events..& fewer were mentored & hired by the men in this circle in academia. In other words, another generation of women now know why we, unlike our male contemporaries who were photographed at these gatherings & became incomprehensibly rich & successfulweren’t invited. Once again: it wasn’t because we aren’t smart enough”
Aug 10 2019 Epstein dies in prison
Aug 2 2019 Slate runs The “Girls” Were Always Around: What it was like to be a scientist in Jeffrey Epstein’s circle.
Jul 31 2019 In a letter to investors, Leon Black says he had a “limited relationship” With Jeffrey Epstein.
Jul 17 2019
Reported Mark Zuckerberg once met Jeffrey Epstein at a dinner hosted by LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman that Elon Musk Peter Thiel and Joi Ito also attended
Jul 15 2019 Media reports Epstein funded John Brockman’s Edge Foundation, that Edge had scrubbed pages and details related to Epstein, that Sarah Kellen identified as a potential Epstein co-conspirator appears in photos of the Edge “billionaire” dinner with science and tech people during TED and that Epstein attended in person the 1999, 2000, and 2011 dinners and names some of the others there. You can find lists of the attendees via Edge’s site in the Wayback Machine.
Jul 13 2019 Jeffrey Epstein‘s New Mexico ranch linked to investigation. “Records show Epstein purchased the ranch, valued by county officials at over $12 million, from the family of former Gov. Bruce King, who died 10 years ago.””Former Gov. Bill Richardson donated $50,000 in 2006 gubernatorial campaign contributions from Epstein to charity.”
Jul 12 2019 Media reports Epstein donated $250,000 to Prof Laurence Krauss‘s Origins Project at ASU over seven years via his Enhanced Education Foundation. ASU said it “returned $25,000 that remained after the program was shut down in September 2018.” Buzzfeed reported Enhanced Education appears to have only filed once with the IRS in 2012.
Jul 12 2019 Media reports Epstein donation $50,000 to University of Arizona. The University states “”We have no plans to repay this contribution.””
Jul 11 2019 Harvard and MIT both decline to comment on donations Epstein made to both schools.
Jul 6 2019
Jeffrey Epstein is arrested
Months before Epstein’s July 2019 arrest: The Hollywood Reporter stating Michael Wolff acknowledges spending a lot of time with Epstein in the month’s leading up to his arrest in his Fall 2021 book “the book culminates in an extended section that places Wolff — looming from his signature, fly-on-the-wall perch — inside the residence of Jeffrey Epstein in the months leading up to the financier’s July 6, 2019, arrest on federal charges of sex trafficking minors.”
Jul 5 2019 Emerging Travel Group raises 10m Round…”an international online travel group” Lev Leviev ( who will be representing investors on the Company’s Board of Directors, ) of LVL1 Group and the family office of Playrix co-founders, Igor and Dmitri Bukhman. “Emerging Travel Group was founded in 2010, and is backed by international venture investors and angels including Vaizra Capital, Founders Fund, Frontier Ventures, Data Collective, Yuri Milner, Esther Dyson, and Fritz Demopoulos.”
Jul 2 2019 Daily Beast runs This Former Google Executive [Andy Rubin] Was Accused Of Running A “Sex Ring”
Jun 3 2019 NYTimes runs On YouTube‘s Digital Playground, An Open Gate For Pedophiles
A piece about the recommendation engine serving up more and more sexualized videos of children even when someone had not been searching for that. “And the extraordinary view counts–sometimes in the millions–indicated that the system had found an audience for the videos and was keeping that audience engaged.” “Youtube, by showing views of children alongside more mainstream sexual content , as well as displaying the videos’ high view counts, risked eroding the taboo against pedophilia, psychologists said. Youtube says its recommendation engine drives 70 percent of views on its platform.”Youtube has not put in place the one change that researchers say would prevent this from happening again: turning off its recommendation system on videos of children, though the platform can identify such videos automatically.
Apr 30 2019
Eric Schmidt steps down from Alphabet Board
Mar 8 2019
Sam Altman steps down from Y Combinator
(to work on Musk, Hoffman, Thiel funded Open AI)
Feb 22 2019 Ev Williams announces he’ll step down from twitter board by end of February 2019.
Jan 9 2019
Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos announce divorce
Fall 2019 Ghislaine Maxwell attends Jeff Bezos‘ Campfire retreat with Scott Borgerson
Dec 19 2018
Ev sells half his twitter stock
Nov 2018 Miami Herald publishes Julie Brown’s Perversion of Justice piece about the light deal Acosta cut that helped Epstein in his 2008 conviction and the injustices and harms done to the survivors
Nov 1 2018 Google worldwide walkout to protest company’s sexual harassment problem and huge pay out to Andy Rubin and general harassment problem. “”I’m not at my desk right now because I’m walking out in solidarity with Googlers and other contractors to protest sexual harassment, misconduct, lack of transparency and a workplace culture that’s not working for everyone.” ”
Nov 27 2018 MIT gives Disobedience award funded by Reid Hoffman to #metoo creator and activists.
Oct 25 2018 Alphabet reportedly paid Android leader [Andy Rubin] a $90 million exit package despite credible sexual misconduct claims against him
Oct 20 2018 Sundar Pichai sends memo to all Google employees saying “the company has fired 48 people over the last two years for sexual harassment, including 13 senior managers and above,”
Oct 21 2018 Prof Lawrence Krauss agrees to retire from ASU after reporting about his history of sexually harassing women.
Sept 27 2018 Elon Musk Charged With Securities Fraud for Misleading Tweets
Mar 25 2018 MbS visits MIT + Media Lab
Mar 2018 On May 17 2023 the WSJ reported that Edge member and MIT Prof Noam “Chomsky confirmed that he received a March 2018 transfer of roughly. $270,000 from an Epstein-linked account. He said it was ‘restricted to rearrangement of my own funds, and did not involve one penny from Epstein.’
Chomsky explained that he asked Epstein for help with a “technical matter” that he said involved the disbursement of funds related to his first marriage.
My late wife…[w]e paid no attention to financial issues…We asked Epstein for advice. The simplest way seemed to be to transfer funds from one account to another by way of his office…When initially asked about his relationship with Epstein, Chomsky had told the [Wall Street] Journal, “First response is that it’s none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally.” 2019 reporting shows Epstein paid for Edge. You can see Chomsky’s Edge involvement by searching Edge.org for his name.
Mar 23 2018 Shareholder sues Facebook after Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Feb 22 2018 Buzzfeed reports on Prof Lawrence Krauss’ sexual harassing behavior of women over many years and universities and events.
Jan 30 2018 Admin Grapples With Franco Ties Amid Sexual Allegations. Palo Alto High School paper.
“Following a set of sexual harassment and misconduct allegations against Palo Alto High School alumnus James Franco, Principal Kim Diorio said in an interview Monday afternoon that she is struggling to determine the future of the Golden-Globe winner’s artistic contributions to the campus.
Diorio decided to have workers paint over the remaining mural on the school’s Student Center, a process which began today, while leaving the paintings inside the Media Arts Center untouched.
I made the decision we’ll take down the mural on the Student Center because I think that’s the one that’s most visible to the outside community, Diorio said.”
Paly journalism teacher and Campanile adviser Esther Wojcicki, who said she enjoyed teaching Franco from 1993 to 1996, said he is a kind man who deserves the chance to explain himself. According to Wojcicki, the allegations seem out of character for Franco.
Mr. Franco I think is a very caring person and he is interested in giving back to the school and education, Wojcicki said. I think there is always two sides to a story and I really don’t know his side of the story at this point.
Wojcicki said that taking down Franco’s artwork would be acting in haste, as his critics are taking allegations, which he has denied, for fact.
Give him the benefit of the doubt, Wojcicki said. That’s the way it’s done in America. You aren’t guilty until you’re proven guilty.
Despite her reluctance to act before hearing Francos explanation, Wojcicki said she supports Diorio’s choice to paint over the mural.
I think Kim Diorio was under a lot of pressure to remove the mural and so she had to, Wojcicki said. I support her decision but I still think that we are all overreacting without giving James a chance to defend himself.
Jan 25 2018 Child rape allegations in the late 80s against David Copperfield are cited in an interview with Brittney Lewis, former mode. She says Copperfield raped her on his island. In 2009 a Seattle woman filed a suit alleging Copperfield raped her. “All in all, the victim says, she spent three days and two nights trapped with Copperfield on the island.” Lewis was repped by Elite, owned by John Casablancas.
Jan 11 2018 Five Women Accuse James Franco of Inappropriate or Sexually Exploitative Behaviour LA Times
Jan 8 2018 A Small Fire Breaks Out on Roof of Trump Tower in NYC
Jan 4 2018 David Copperfield posts on twitter about when he was accused (more coverage) of drugging and raping a teenage model named Brittney Lewis he met at The Look Of The Year contest in 1988.
Nov 5 2017
Yuri Milner, Zuckerberg, Ev Russia funded Facebook and Twitter investments through Kushner investor (Yuri Milner/DST Global). Revealed through the Paradise Papers. More. “This strategy allowed DST to corner the Russian web market almost completely. By 2010, the company was publicly bragging that 70 percent of Russian page views—and 50 percent of the time spent by Russians online”
“DST had been founded in 2005, just three years before the 2008 world financial crisis laid waste to many Russian fortunes. Yet by 2009, Milner and Finger were going on a shopping spree that included some $500 million to buy 5 percent of Facebook as well as a chunk of the American online gaming company Zynga. Where did they get all of that money?”
“Milner and Finger had started DST with their own funds, and the returns on their early investments, though very successful, were just a fraction of those sums, pocket change compared with the money they were throwing around by 2010. (At the time, a banker close to DST, who wished to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak on the record, told me that the returns on DST’s other investments “haven’t been sufficient to cover the Facebook and Zynga deals.”)”
The funds, it turned out, came largely from Alisher Usmanov”
“Usmanov had a long track record of buying properties—including paintings, publishing houses, and gas fields—on behalf of Kremlin interests. This time, Usmanov bought a 35-percent stake in DST, and was, by all accounts, Milner’s cash cow.”
“The Russian companies that DST invested his money in also did quite well, but that was only half the point. The other half was to give the Kremlin a way to control these new and very influential companies, to make sure there was a receptive person there when the Kremlin called with a demand.”
“Ownership, in other words, had replaced censorship. A similar pattern unfolded in print media, but the web was left largely untouched.
But by the time Medvedev took office in 2009, the picture had changed.
And while the Kremlin was eager to attract Western investors, it didn’t want them everywhere. In the spring after his election as president, Medvedev announced that the Kremlin would keep a close eye on foreign investment in “strategic” internet firms. “The arrival of foreign investors … is unavoidable on one hand. But at the same time—I hope this doesn’t sound too conservative—this needs to be watched closely because it is a security issue,” Medvedev said in April 2009. It was at that point that the Russians began honing at home the model of influence that’s currently preoccupying the West.
Sep 1 2017 “Thick black smoke was seen billowing from a chimney of the [Russian] San Francisco consulate.” It was a record 106 degrees that day. HT @primitiveradio
Aug 2017 “publicist” Masha Drokova emails Science journalist Jeffrey Mervis “asking whether I wanted to interview her client, Jeffrey Epstein” about Trump’s proposed science budget cuts (HT Bryan Campen)
Jun 23 2017 Reid Hoffman posts asking for a DecencyPledge about the ongoing harassment and abuse of women in tech
June 29 2017 News breaks that Peter Thiel has had citizenship in New Zealand since 2011 and that Thiel has owned a 193ha property there since 2015.
June 21 2017 Travis Kalanick steps down as Uber’s CEO
May 11 2017 The Story of Masha Drokova, a Putin Acolyte Turned Silicon Valley Investor “Esther Dyson…has been a mentor to Ms Drokova and backed her visa. (HT Bryan Campen) “Tech investor Esther Dyson, who sits on the board of Russian search engine giant Yandex NV, said she has been a mentor to Ms. Drokova.
“Most amazing people had some kind of a learning experience,” Ms. Dyson said. “With the help of her Nashi experience, she has gained a respect for the truth.”…”Ms. Drokova still travels regularly to Russia, where her parents live.”
Apr 15 2017 Epstein meets at MIT with Joi Ito, Ed Boyden and Caleb Harper. p46 MIT report
2017 Jeffrey Epstein donates $50k to the University of Arizona Science of Consciousness Conference via his Gratitude America Foundation
Dec 23 2016 House Intelligence Committee report: “Since Snowdon’s arrival in Moscow, he has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence services [redacted] and in June 2016, the deputy chairman of the Russian parliament’s defense and security committee asserted that “Snowden did share intelligence” with his government. via @Seth_hettena
Dec 14 2016 Elon Musk joins Donald trump‘s Advisory Council.
Nov 10 2016 Peter Thiel to Enter Trump Inner Circle as Tech Advisor
July 21, 2016 July 21, 2026 Forbidden Research event which included Epstein-funded, Edge member George Church and a panel titled Sexual deviance: can technology protect our children? with Ron Arkin, Ethan Zuckerman, Kate Darling and Christina Couch. The days events were introduced by Ethan, Cory Doctorow and Joi Ito. “Conducting research on adults who have sex with children is virtually impossible due to ethical and legal restrictions. The advancement of technologies like robots and virtual reality has opened the door to exploring questions that were previously not possible. But while a U.S. court case has held that virtual child pornography is legal, the law in this area is controversial and emotionally charged. Legal uncertainties and vast stigma make actual research difficult. At the same time, a better understanding of this deviant behavior has the potential to significantly change lives.” “The panel was 100% my idea and I had to convince Joi and others to let me do it.” posted Kate Darling on Jan 28, 2021.
July 2016 “Despite allowing Epstein on campus in April 2016 (and again in 2017), Ito and other MIT staff recognized the risks of being seen to associate with Epstein. In July 2016, Ito sought advice from Reid Hoffman about whether to allow Epstein to attend a conference (perhaps the announcement of the Media Lab Directors’ Fellows) with “lots of people” who may “see him and maybe know he’s involved.”2020 MIT Fact Finding report .
July 2016 Reid Hoffman gives $250,000 to MIT Media Lab run by Joi Ito to create an award for “ethical disobedience.”
June 2 2016 Saudi Arabia’s MbS invests 3.5 BN in Uber. As of Nov11 2019 it increased ” The Saudi Public Investment Fund is also a big backer of Softbank’s massive Vision Fund (it has over $100 billion in assets), which has a 16% stake in Uber ownership….The investment was – and remains – the largest lump-sum investment from a foreign government in a U.S. startup.” As of 5/8/21 the company remains unprofitable.
Apr 14 2016 Investor of Kremlin money into Facebook + twitter and co-funder with Epstein of Edge dinners and Epstein conference attendee. Both also part of TED which posted: “Russian philanthropist Yuri Milner, along with board member Stephen Hawking, unveiled a plan on Tuesday to send a fleet of iPhone-sized robots to our closest star, Alpha Centauri”
Apr 1 2016 Epstein meets at MIT with Joi Ito, Joe Jacobson and Barnaby Marsh. p46 MIT report
Mar 7 2016 Epstein meets at MIT with Joi Ito and Kevin Esvelt. p46 MIT report
Feb 7 2016 Epstein meets at MIT with Joscha Bach and Seth Lloyd. p46 MIT report
Oct 24 2015 Epstein meets at MIT with Neri Oxman, Joi Ito, Danny Hillis and two unnamed MIT students. p46 MIT report
Sep 6 2015 James Franco to teach High School Film Class “Franco is teaming up with one of his former teachers, Palo Alto High School journalism teacher Esther Wojcicki, to teach an eight-part film class that is open to all local students, grades 9 through 12.” “Wojcicki is donating her time, and Franco is covering the rest of the expenses for now, she said.”
Aug 2015 Reid Hoffman hosts Joi Ito and Jeffrey Epstein at dinner in Silicon Valley and Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel attend.
Apr 13 2015 Admin to Cover Franco Mural In the Palo Alto High School publication: “The Palo Alto High School administration plans to paint over one of the murals painted on campus last fall by ’96 alumnus filmmaker and actor James Franco.” “According to Wojcicki, Franco spent four days working on the two murals on the Student Center and significant time on the 18 paintings displayed elsewhere on campus. The murals cost around $15,000 each, Franco told Wojcicki.” “
I think he [Franco] will be disappointed, but I think I understand the reason that people want it down because it looks not very cheery, Wojcicki said. Somehow it [the mural] just got to looking much more sort of dark on the outside mural I think it looks a little depressing, too, but I like the one in my room.
While there have been a few complaints about the mural, according to Diorio, the positive comments outweigh the negative ones. However, Diorio and many students are open to the possibility of Paly students painting over the mural.”
Mar 2015 Harvard Crimson reports based on Wall Street Journal reporting “Financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey E. Epstein met with Harvard professor Martin A. Nowak, linguist Noam Chomsky, and other unidentified academics in March 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.” “According to Epstein’s schedules, the Journal reported, Chomsky met with Epstein on several occasions during 2015 and 2016, including a meeting with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak.” “Asked if he regretted his association with Epstein, Chomsky wrote, “I’ve met [all] sorts of people, including major war criminals. I don’t regret having met any of them.”” “
The report does not identify which Harvard faculty Epstein met with at the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics office, describing them only as “leading scholars from Harvard and elsewhere in science and math and, occasionally, individuals involved in public life.”
“Epstein was routinely accompanied on these visits by young women, described as being in their 20s, who acted as his assistants,” the report added.” Noam Chomsky and Martin Nowak are also members of the Epstein funded Edge run by John Brockman. You can see their involvement by searching on their names at edge.org.
Mar 18 2015 Brockman holds annual Edge Billionaire’s dinner. Attendees include Jesse Dylan, Larry Page, Yuri Milner, Wojcicki, Peter Gabriel, Salar Kamangar, MIT’s Rodney Brooks, Tim O’Reilly. Stewart Brand, Zack Bogue, Peter Diamandis, Marissa Mayer. Gallery here. Here’s how Brockman chose to frame these dinners “Edge is different from The Invisible College (1646), The Club (1764), The Cambridge Apostles (1820), The Bloomsbury Group (1905), or The Algonquin Roundtable (1919), but it offers the same quality of intellectual adventure.Perhaps the closest resemblance is to the early nineteenth century Lunar Society of Birmingham (1765), an informal dinner club and learned society of leading cultural figures of the new industrial age—James Watt, Joseph Priestly, Benjamin Franklin, and the two grandfathers of Charles Darwin, Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood. The Society met each month near the full moon”
2015 Yuri Milner‘s Milner Global Foundation donated to John Brockman’s Edge Foundation. Jeffrey Epstein also donated this year (via Enhanced Education) and many other years going back to its early years. He was a major donor.
Nov 30 2014 Jeffrey Epstein met at Harvard, [his] calendar lists a dinner with multiple attendees: “Dinner w/ Jeff Epstein, Joi Ito, Reid Hoffman and Martin Nowak, 8pm, Martin Nowak’s institute, 1 Brattle Square, Suite 6, Cambridge, MA.” The address matches the address for the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics.
Oct 31 2014 Andy Rubin leaves Google
Sept 12 2014 Epstein has call with geneticist George Church and James Clement, longevity expert.
Sept 2014 Epstein was scheduled to meet with Peter Thiel 3 times, including lunch Sep 14, 15 and following weekend. “
At the time, Mr. Thiel sat on the board of Facebook and oversaw Founders Fund, a top venture capital firm. Mr. Thiel was also the chairman of Palantir, the C.I.A.-backed data analytics company, which at the time was seeking outside investments.
Two years later, Mr. Thiel was the most prominent Silicon Valley investor to back the successful presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.” Thiel Capital’s Managing Director Eric Weinstein is a longtime member of Edge, which was funded by Epstein.
June 21 2014 Epstein lunches with George Church at Harvard
Apr 22 2014 Epstein met with Church at the Harvard Medical School’s Genetics Department building
Apr 21 2014 Epstein meets at MIT with Joi Ito, Barnaby Marsh, and Kevin Slavin.p46 MIT report
Apr 3 2014 The FBI publishes an op-ed. FBI Boston office warns of VC scams
“The [Skolkovo] Foundation may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research, development facilities and dual-use technologies with military and commercial applications.”
Apr 3 2014 James Franco Allegedly Asks Teenage Girl to Meet At Hotel “Huffington Post: “An alleged private conversation between James Franco and a 17-year-old girl visiting New York from Scotland has leaked online, in which the actor appears to try to convince her to meet him at a hotel room.”
“Given Franco’s response to the leaked conversation, it’s worth noting that this all seems very strange. We can’t help but wonder (and hope) if this could be part of an elaborate promotional campaign for Franco’s new movie Palo Alto, based on his own short stories, in which he plays a high school girls’ soccer coach who has an affair with one of his teenage players.”
Mar 24 2014 Facebook’s press release announcing it is acquiring Palmer Luckey‘s Oculus for $2 Billion, ($400 million cash). Release does not include mention that Facebook investors and Board members Peter Thiel and Marc Andreesen are investors in Oculus, with Andreesen on the Board.
Mar 17 2014 Brockman hold’s annual Edge Billionaire dinner. Attendees include Paul Allen, Simonyi, Salar Kamangar, Bezos. Gallery here. Later reporting (Sept 2019) shows Epstein paid for Edge.
Jan 13 2014
Yandex adds FB posts and big data to its results in Russia
“Yandex, which accounts for around 60% of all searches in Russia, will also use Facebook firehose data to help provide more relevant results.”
Oct 29 2013 Eric Schmidt hosts Bill Richardson at Google talking about his book How to Sweet Talk A Shark
Oct 23 2013 Epstein meets at MIT with Joi Ito and Neil Gershenfeld. p46 MIT report
Sept 27 2013 Jack Ma joins Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan and Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki as a funder of the Life Sciences Breakthrough Prize.
Sept 12 2013 John Brockman, then Evgeny Morozov’s agent writes him encouraging him to meet Epstein:
Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire science philanthropist showed up at this weekend’s event by helicopter (with his beautiful young assistant from Belarus). He’ll be in Cambridge in a couple of weeks asked me who he should meet. You are one of the people I suggested and I told him I would send some links.
He’s the guy who gave Harvard #30m to set up Martin Nowak. He’s been extremely generous in funding projects of many of our friends and clients. He also got into trouble and spent a year in jail in Florida.
If he contacts you it’s probably worth your time to meet him as he’s extremely bright and interesting.
Last time I visited his house (the largest private residence in NYC), I walked in to find him in a sweatsuit and a British guy in a suit with suspenders, getting foot massages from two young well-dressed Russian women. After grilling me for a while about cyber-security, the Brit, named Andy, was commenting on the Swedish authorities and the charges against Julian Assange.
“We think they’re liberal in Sweden, but its more like Northern England as opposed to Southern Europe,” he said. “In Monaco, Albert works 12 hours a day but at 9pm, when he goes out, he does whatever he wants, and nobody cares. But, if I do it, I’m in big trouble.” At that point I realized that the recipient of Irina’s foot massage was his Royal Highness, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York.
Indeed, a week later, on a slow news day, the cover of the NYpost had a full-page photo of Jeffrey and Andrew walking in Central Park under the headline: “The Prince and the Perv.” (That was the end of Andrew’s role at the UK trade ambassador.)
Jul 29 2013 Epstein meets at MIT with Neil Gershenfeld, Reid Hoffman, and Megan Smith. p46 MIT report
Jul 3 2013 Esther Dyson tweets “The most effective way for the United States to prevent Snowden from leaking secrets is to collect and store fewer secrets.”
June 28 2013 Epstein meets at MIT with Joi Ito, Neil Gershenfeld and Ed Boyden. p46 MIT report.
Feb 26 2013 John Brockman holds his annual Edge Billionaire’s dinner. Attendees include Yuri and Julia Milner, Danny Hillis, Jeff Skoll, Sergey Brin, Zack Bogue, Brin, Page, Wojcicki. Gallery here. Later reporting (Sept 2019) shows Epstein paid for Edge.
Feb 8 2013 Eric Schmidt cashing out 42 percent of his Google stock.
Mar 1 2013 Bill Gates flies from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey to Palm Beach with Jeffrey Epstein.
Jan 3 2013 Announced Eric Schmidt will visit North Korea with former Gov Bill Richardson
Late December 2012 Stan and Esther Wojcicki attend birthday party for Yuri Milner with their daughter Anne Wojcicki and Sergey Brin (and Amanda Rosenberg, Google Glass pr lead, eventual Brin girlfriend)
Dec 19 2012 23andme refers to George Church as part of its scientific advisory board.
Dec 11 2012 Yuri Milner invests in 23andme
Nov 19 2012 Pierre and Pam Omidyar create and fund anti-trafficking organization that rolls up existing anti-trafficking groups. “Former eBay colleague Jeff Skoll and Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have both backed antislavery initiatives through their respective foundations after consulting with Humanity United”
Oct 1 2012
Mark Zuckerberg Visits Moscow, Meets With Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev
Oct 1 2012 Esther Dyson, an entrepreneur of global renown, will come to Moscow International Forum for Innovative Development “Open Innovations”, where she will be a moderator of the panel discussion “The World in 2030: Vision, Opportunities and Risks”….Esther Dyson has put a lot of effort into the development of the Russian innovation environment as well. In December 2009, she became a member of the work group for the development of the project aimed at creating the Skolkovo Innovation City.
Feb 28 2012 John Brockman’s Edge Billionaire’s Dinner. Gallery and attendees including Tim O’Reilly, Bezos, Brin, Myhrvold, Dave Morin (listed as co-inventor Facebook Platform), Salar Kamangar CEO YouTube here. Later reporting (Sept 2019) shows Epstein paid for Edge.
Feb 24 2012 Ashton Kutcher rides along with police from various Bay Area jurisdictions and observes child porn raid and arrests in Marin County. “Kutcher observed the raid conducted by the Silicon Valley Internet Crimes Against Children Task force, authorities said, because the organization he and his estranged wife founded, the Demi and Ashton Foundation, supports the goals of the multi-agency task force.” Kutcher filed for divorce from Demi Moore December 21, 2012.
Oct 21 2011 How Russian Tycoon Yuri Milner Bought His Way Into Silicon Valley Wired runs this piece by Michael Wolff which it then removes from its archive at some point. Usmanov would eventually be sanctioned by the US after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Wolff wrote in 2011: “What’s more, a whisper campaign has dogged his American adventure. Indeed, among the early backers of his investment fund, Digital Sky Technologies, was Alisher Usmanov—one of the richest men in Russia, who even other Russian oligarchs find, to say the least, a little dodgy. (Usmanov’s résumé includes alleged Kremlin associations and an overturned conviction for fraud and extortion.”
More excerpts:
“Milner, who runs his business from a no-frills office suite in Moscow, is spending more and more time in the Valley and so has bought a place in Los Altos Hills—not just the Valley’s most expensive house but, at a reported $100 million, among the most expensive in America.”
“Here’s an outsider who has handed out money at outrageously founder-friendly terms—paying huge amounts for relatively small stakes, essentially buying exclusive access to the most desirable companies on the web!”
“That’s why I’m here—in Russia and in his parents’ apartment—to try to figure out just what his advantage is. If he is a game changer, how exactly does the game change? I’m curious, too, about what he’s after personally: He seems to want respect from the Silicon Valley folk—but why would he? Why does he care what they think? Milner’s rise as a power-brokering investor happened so fast—his fund went from zero equity to more than $12 billion in US assets in less than two years”
“The very decision to invest in Facebook is partly the result of a gossipy Moscow dinner with the Russian Goldman guys, during which—in between pitching their investment-banking services—the bankers mention that Facebook might be looking to do a major investment round. This is just months after Lehman Brothers collapsed, with the world economy plunged into crisis. MySpace, the leader in social media, is sinking fast”
“What’s more, he has money in the bank. Or he can quickly get it. Milner has created a separate fund to invest in international—and especially American—Internet companies, with Usmanov taking the biggest stake. The oligarch has the money and an interest in Internet properties, including, along with Mail.ru, an investment in the news sites Livejournal.com in the US and Gazeta.ru in Russia. The fund is called Digital Sky Technologies, and Facebook is its first target.
Milner offers something radically or foolishly different: an investment with no such preferences and no board seats. In effect, his money is like IPO money—no advantages for regular shareholders—without the burden of an IPO (the time suck of a road show, the administrative costs of being public, the short-term earnings pressure of the market).
“Milner buying a small stake in Facebook, valuing the entire company at $10 billion—and, on the other, Facebook debasing itself by taking Russian money. Russian money! In fact, it seems rather like a desperate deal for both parties (in the midst of the banking crisis, Facebook has only two other bidders for this round—and none from the top VC tier).”
“It’s the new reality of social media: Wherever something is happening you now find Zelig-like Milner. He will keep buying. Money for him is no object.“
“Milner, not only the largest outside investor in one of the world’s most sought-after companies but, thanks to his relationship with Zuckerberg, one of its gatekeepers, cuts Goldman into the deal. This is a substantial reversal of Goldman’s usual position, in which it decides who gets to invest while mostly closing everyone else out. Goldman agrees to put in $375 million of its own capital against Milner’s $125 million and raise the rest from its standing clients. It also splits its 4 percent fee on the total money raised with Milner and, as well, splits the 5 percent fee on whatever investors gain beyond their initial investment. It is, for vaunted Goldman, an almost unheard of arrangement.”
“It is not just his access to global capital or his facility in markets where being an American is not necessarily an advantage (in the past 12 months, he has invested more than $1 billion in Chinese Internet companies“
Oct 2011 “In October 2011, MIT launched a multi-year collaboration to assist Russian partners in building a new university, the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech)”
Jul 28 2011. Google‘s Married Chairman [Eric Schmidt] Has a New Girlfriend ” and Boy Is She His Type
July 5 2011
Yuri Milner invests in AirBNB
June 22 2011 Peter Thiel is granted New Zealand citizenship without usual residency requirements, showing an intent to reside in New Zealand, working for an approved New Zealand organisation or even going to New Zealand for the citizenship process. This was granted while he was in Santa Monica CA. New Zealand states it was in the “public interest.”
Spring 2011 MIT Media Lab Fellow Sarah Szalavitz : “I, too, told Joi shortly after he joined the Lab Epstein was a vile convicted pedophile & wrote & shared a very detailed memo, while I was teaching there. (also tried & failed at Harvard)…IME powerful men (especially at the Lab) liked that I wasn’t afraid to disagree or would tell them directly what was wrong. So that’s how I approached Joi. Then I spent years wondering why I’d been excluded, wondering if my AWESOME work wasn’t good enough”
May 3 2011 Russian search-engine Yandex passed information to FSB
Apr 26 2011 Joi Ito named head of MIT Media Lab MIT posts: MIT Media Lab hires college dropout as director: Beyond Negroponte
“Micah Sifry posts this quote from Joi Ito‘s Whiplash acknowledgements and bit of commentary: Thanks to Megan Smith, who turned to me on a bus trundling from Oxford to Cambridge and asked if I’d be interested in becoming the director of the Media Lab. Ito became the director in 2011. From 2008 to 2018, Smith (who served in the Obama Administration after leaving Google) was married to Swisher. Small world!”
Jan 20 2011
Eric Schmidt steps down as Google CEO
Jan 3 2011 Brockman holds his annual Edge Billionaire’s dinner. Attendees include David Brooks, Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, Peter Gabriel, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Zack Bogue. Gallery here. Later reporting (Sept 2019) shows Epstein paid for Edge.
2011 Russian state-controlled bank VTB funded a $191m investment in Twitter. “When Twitter was preparing to float on the stock market in 2013, the VTB-funded vehicle held a 2% stake in the company. The VTB-funded stake was sold in May 2014, according to Milner.”
Dec 2010 Epstein has a gathering to celebrate when he is released from fancy jail. Prince Andrew and tech/science literary agent and Edge organizer John Brockman attend. Prince Andrew discusses this in his 2019 BBC interview
Nov 16 2010 Yuri Milner makes a change in Silicon Valley. He doesn’t take seats on the Boards of companies in which he invests and “It’s pioneered a new kind of investment model in which it buys big stakes of companies that are said to be on the cusp of an IPO, leading to the adoption of the term “DST-style” investment in Valley jargon.”
Oct 29 2010
Yandex and Facebook strike a deal
Oct 4 2010 Ev Williams steps down as twitter CEO.
Feb 16 2010 Esther Dyson, Jack Dorsey, Shervin Pishevar and Ashton Kutcher are part of State Dept trip to Russia. Includes Medvedev and anti-trafficking meetings.
Feb 11 2010 Annual John Brockman Edge Billionaire’s dinner during TED in Long Beach. Attendees included Danny Hillis, Bill Gates, Epstein research fundee George Church, Arianna Huffington, Jeff Bezos, Stewart Brand, Sergey Brin, Anne and Susan Wojcicki. Gallery and list of attendees and press here. Later reporting (Sept 2019) shows Epstein paid for Edge
Jan 25 2010 Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore launch DNA Demi and Ashton Foundation to “forc[e] sex slavery out of the shadows and into the spotlight.” “following a field visit with the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the US-Mexico border. “
Jan 2010 Jeffrey Epstein hosts Mindshift conference his island. Isabel Maxwell‘s partner Al Seckel (whom pretended to have a PhD and also to be married to Isabel) co-hosted. Brock Pierce “creator of virtual currencies and goods” attended as did a number of scientists connected to Edge including Murray Gell-Mann. List.
2010 Epstein donates $25,000 to the Santa Fe Institute via his Epstein Interests Foundation.
Dec 2009 “Esther Dyson has put a lot of effort into the development of the Russian innovation environment as well. In December 2009, she became a member of the work group for the development of the project aimed at creating the Skolkovo Innovation City.”
April 17 2009 Ev appears on Oprah and Ashton Kutcher promotes twitter with follower competition with CNN. “Twitter is an Internet-based tool that allows individuals or organizations to send short messages to computer screens and mobile devices, alerting followers about anything from breaking news to the senders sometimes mundane activities.
Apr 13 2009 Peter Thiel writes: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” and “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.”
April 2009 “Medvedev announced that the Kremlin would keep a close eye on foreign investment in “strategic” internet firms. “The arrival of foreign investors … is unavoidable on one hand. But at the same time—I hope this doesn’t sound too conservative—this needs to be watched closely because it is a security issue,” “
Mar 31 2009
Anne Wojcicki‘s 23andMe holds fashion week party with Ivanka Trump promoting company
NYT reports Wendy Deng and Harvey Weinstein as token investors
Feb 5 2009 Annual Edge Billionaire’s dinner during TED at L’Opera in Long Beach. Attendees included Bill Gates, Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, Zack Bogue, Joi Ito. Gallery and list of attendees and press here. Later reporting (Sept 2019) shows Epstein paid for Edge
2009 Yuri Milner invests in Facebook. “The pair became friends and Zuckerberg attended Milner’s wedding in California late in 2011. The ceremony was held at a vast mansion atop a hillside near Silicon Valley that Milner had recently bought for $100m. Milner and Zuckerberg are advisers to each other’s philanthropic ventures and remain close.” “Russia’s role in exploiting Facebook and Twitter to influence the 2016 US election is an important strand of an FBI inquiry and congressional investigations.”
“The Twitter and Facebook investments were made by Milner’s investment company DST Global, which was set up in 2009. At the time, Milner joined forces with the Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov, a co-owner of Arsenal FC, who invested heavily in DST Global funds.”
Oct 8 2008 “field house” at Leon Black‘s Bedford NJ home property burns down. HT @xeni
Jul 10 2008 Joi Ito posts to his blog announcing he’s added Esther Wojcicki to the Creative Commons Board
Jul 1 2008 Jeffrey Epstein goes to fancy jail as a sex offender.
Feb 27 2008 John Brockman’s Edge hold’s its annual Digerati dinner during TED. Attendees include Ev Williams, Mark Zuckerberg, Nassim Taleb, Jason Calcanis, Kevin Kelly, Chris Anderson, Nathan Myhrvold, Pierre Omidyar, Larry Page, Anne Wojcicki, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, Linda Avey, Aubrey De Grey, Craig Venter, Matt Groening, Esther Dyson, Esther Wojcicki, Stan Wojcicki, Peter Diamandis. Photo gallery here.
Dec 7 2007 Larry Page marries Lucy Southworth on Branson’s Necker Island. Richard Branson was the best man. “Lucy Southworth, 27, is currently studying biomedical informatics at Stanford and holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Oxford, according to the New York Post, which also reports that the svelte blonde did medical work in South Africa and “wants to better the world.”
Oct 19 2007 FBI raids magician David Copperfield in Vegas following sexual misconduct accusations by an unidentified woman”…”agents had seized some $2 million and computer equipment”
Jul 25 2007 Esther Dyson, then an early investor and Board Member of 23andme writes a WSJ column: “I’m one of 10 members of Harvard geneticist George Church‘s Personal Genome project…I believe that the broader spread of this kind of medical and personal information is inevitable”
May 24 2007 Google invests $3.9 million in 23andme. “some of that $3.9 million is going to pay back a $2.6 million loan that Brin made to 23andMe.”
May 16 2007
Brin and Wojcicki marry at David Copperfields island
March 7, 2007 John Brockman hosts his annual Edge dinner during TED. Later reporting showed Epstein paid for the dinners. Attendees included Larry Page, Anne Wojcicki, Sergey Brin, Kevin Kelly, Dean Kamen, Peter Gabriel, Seed editor Adam Bly and Esther Dyson, Gallery here.
“Brockman’s influence was substantial. A 1991 essay by Brockman called “The Third Culture” was foundational for a now-defunct science magazine called Seed, which was aimed at bridging the gap between humanists and scientists. I was an intern at that magazine in 2006; I discovered recently, by reading court documents, that Epstein was one of the board members for its parent company.”–Elizabeth Lopatto writing in The Verge
2007 Harvard Prof and Edge dinner participant Steven Pinker provides legal defense assistance for Jeffrey Epstein‘s first criminal case. Pinker is a Psychology Prof and his graduate adviser was the Epstein-funded Stephen Kosslyn.
Dec 18 2006 Joi Ito Named Chairman of Creative Commons; Lawrence Lessig to Remain CEO and Board Member. Press release.
July 15 2006 Prince Andrew hosts a ball at Windsor Castle to celebrate daughter Beatrice’s 18th birthday. Attendee’s include: Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Harvey Weinstein and Ashton Kutcher.
2006 Epstein donates $250,000 to the Santa Fe Institute before 2007 begins. “Jenna Marshall, a spokesperson for the Santa Fe Institute, told BuzzFeed News by email that it received $250,000 from Epstein before 2007, before his crimes were known.”
March 2006 Epstein funds and hosts on his island a Lawrence Krauss-organized conference on gravity. Stephen Hawking attends.
Feb 27, 2006 John Brockman‘s Edge annual Billionaire Dinner. Photos and attendees.
2006 Esther Dyson joins the board of Yandex
2005 At Harvard “professor Stephen M. Kosslyn, now emeritus, named Epstein a visiting fellow in the Psychology department, Bacow wrote in an email announcing the review last September. According to Friday’s report, Epstein who did not hold an undergraduate degree was not qualified for the research he applied to conduct, nor did he conduct much of that research during his two-year appointment.”
Feb 22 2005 Edge holds its annual Billionaire’s Dinner. Attendees include Craig Venter, Sergey Brin, Larry Page. Later reporting (Sept 2019) shows Epstein paid for Edge. This one is later credited by 23andme co-founder Anne Wojcicki in WIRED as the germination of the company. “In February 2005, Anne Wojcicki sat down at the so-called Billionaires’ Dinner, an annual event held in Monterey, California, and asked her tablemates about their urine. She was curious whether, after eating asparagus, they could smell it when they urinated. Among those at her table were geneticist Craig Venter; Ryan Phelan, the CEO of DNA Direct, a San Francisco genetic-testing company; and Wojcicki’s then-boyfriend (and now husband), Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google. Most could pick up the smell of methyl mercaptan, a sulfur compound released as our guts digest the vegetable. But some had no idea what Wojcicki was talking about. They had, it seems, a genetic variation that made the particular smell imperceptible to them.” Co-founder Linda Avey tells a bit of a different founding story on Quora in which she starts the early idea in 2003 and also names Paul Cusenza as her original co-founder and Anne committing to join at TED. Then Avey quits her job the next month.
Dec 23 2004 Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 passed written by Dana Rohrbacher. On May 3, 2020 Rohrbacher posted to twitter:
“Elon’s vision & entrepreneurial skills inspired me to write the Commercial Space Act of 2004 which has yielded $billions in private sector investment, pushing the envelope of human achievement in space as we saw today. Elon is still leading the way 🙂 Bravo @elonmusk!”
Feb 26 2004 Edge holds its annual Billionaire’s Dinner at the Indian summer restaurant in Monterey during TED. Attendees include: Pierre and Pam Omidyar, Jeffrey Epstein, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, Seth Lloyd, Michael Wolff. Full list including press here. Later reporting (Sept 2019) shows Epstein paid for Edge.
Jun 16 2003 Larry Lessig‘s Creative Commons and it’s Board of Directors adds Joi Ito to the Board
Apr 27 2003 Joi Ito posts to his blog “Pierre Omidyar, my classmate from Tufts, founder of eBay, an advisor to and investor in Neoteny and a good friend, recently started a blog“
Feb 27 2003 Edge holds its annual “Billionaire’s Dinner” during TED and posts a photo of Eric Schmidt with Epstein alleged co-conspirator Kelly Bovino “who is listed in Epstein’s Little Black Book and identified by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a survivor of Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring, as an employee and alleged procurer for Epstein.” and also Sarah Kellen (another alleged Epstein recruiter) with Max Brockman. Other attendees include: Steven Pinker, Larry Page, Freeman Dyson, Marvin Minsky, Sergey Brin, Jeff and Mackenzie Bezos and host John Brockman. Later reporting (Sept 2019) shows Epstein paid for Edge.
2003 From a July 2019 New York magazine piece: “In 2003, Primedia Inc. was looking to sell New York Magazine, and Mort Zuckerman and then-media columnist Michael Wolff rounded up some investors to purchase the property. The group included TV personality and businessman Donny Deutsch, billionaire Nelson Peltz, Jeffrey Epstein, and Harvey Weinstein.” Wolff attended/covered at least the 2001 and 2004 Edge dinners.
Feb 21 2002 John Brockman’s Edge hosts it’s annual Billionaire dinner at Cibo’s in Monterey. Attendees include: Sarah Kellen, Dean Kamen, Nathan Myhrvold, Kelly Bovino, Sarah Kellen and Cindy Lopez (Bovino, and Kellen –another story in which Kellen is named and have been accused of trafficking with Jeffrey Epstein), Cindy Lopez (who appears to be very young and is pictured with Kellen in the gallery linked below) Jeff Bezos, Rupert Murdoch, Nicholas Negroponte (who created the MIT Media Lab and later defended Joi Ito and MIT taking Epstein’s money), Linda Stone, host John Brockman, Danny Hillis, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker (who flew to the event on Epstein’s plane and later helped Epstein in his defense of his first criminal case), Steve Jurvetson. List of attendees and press here. Later reporting (Sept 2019) shows Epstein paid for Edge.
2002 Jeffrey Epstein donates $100,000 to Marvin Minsky at MIT.
Feb 22 2001 Edge holds its annual Digerati Dinner (which eventually is re-named the Billionaire Dinner) during TED. Attendees can be seen here and include Martha Stewart, Charles Simonyi, Steve Jurvetson, Andrew Anker, Sean Parker, Jeffrey Epstein, Esther Dyson, Stewart Brand, Marvin Minsky Jeff Bezos, host John Brockman, John Heilmann, Michael Wolff and many other members of the press. Later reporting (Sept 2019) shows Epstein paid for Edge.
Feb 24 2000 John Brockman’s Edge’s annual Digerati Dinner at Cibo in Monterey. Attendees included Jeffrey Epstein, Nathan Myhrvold, Nicholas Negroponte founder of the MIT Media Lab, Patti Maes MIT Media Lab, Linda Stone, Michael Milken. All attendees and press pictured and listed here. Later reporting (Sept 2019) shows Epstein paid for Edge.
Nov 1 1999 Brock Pierce, then 18 and VP of DEN resigns along with he EVP and Chairman. The DEN made streaming shows with child actors. Fast Company reported: “Eventually, a number of these acolytes would file lawsuits alleging they were raped and/or sexually abused at M&C; by the three cofounders. Their charges are remarkably consistent all claim they were bullied and drugged to coerce sexual compliance, and in some cases, threatened with loaded guns. When the plaintiffs filed civil suits against Collins-Rector, Shackley, and Pierce, the three suddenly disappeared with what remained of their fortune”turning up two years later living in a villa in Spain. They were arrested by local authorities, who uncovered “an enormous collection of child porn,” according to Spanish police report.”
Feb 18 1999 Edge hold’s its annual TED-time Digerati Dinner, then in a small room at Cibo in Monterey. Attendees and press including Nathan Myhrvold, Jeff and Mackenzie Bezos, Joi Ito and Linda Stone pictured and listed here. Later reporting (Sept 2019) shows Epstein paid for Edge.
June 24 1998 Michael Wolff publishes Burn Rate, the story of his attempt to sell his start up to (Ghislaine’s sisters) Christine and Isabel Maxwell’s Magellan. From the NYT review (which also notes complaints from the Maxwell sisters about his characterization of their considered acquisition): “It is fast cash, rather than content, that seems of most interest to Mr. Wolff and his investors. Like so many entrepreneurs making the venture-capital cyberrounds, he wants his business to “build brand, gain position” and then cash in by being “taken out” in an I.P.O. for tens of millions of dollars.”
April 1998 Esther Dyson with Nathan Myhrvold on Microsoft trip to Russia.
April 28 1998 Esther Dyson visits Andrei Sajharov’s house in Sarov Russia with Jeffrey Epstein. She posts a photo of the visit to Flickr in 2005. Screencap of same.
Feb 23 1998 Edge holds its Digerati Dinner during TED. “about 30 movers and shakers took their seats at the three banquet tables and talked tech” Attendees include Nathan Myhrvold.
Aug 17 1997 16-year-old Ivanka Trump has been signed as a model to Donald Trump‘s friend’s John Casablancas‘ Elite. NYTimes.
Sep 1991 The Look Of the Year modeling contest in NY. Judges include Elite models owner John Casablancas, Donald Trump and David Copperfield, Elite co-owner Gerald Marie and his wife Linda Evangelista. Evangelista separated from him in 92. Trump judged it again in 1992. All of these men have been accused of raping teenagers. (Marie, Casablancas, Copperfield, Trump and Epstein) More allegations against Trump.
Sep 1988 The Look of the Year modeling contest in Atami Japan Teen model Brittney Lewis, repped by Elite says she met David Copperfield there. He was a judge. She also accuses him of drugging and raping her later.
80s and 90s From a July 2019 New York Magazine piece “In Fire and Fury, his first book on the Trump administration, Michael Wolff reported that Trump, Epstein, and private-equity manager and Trump campaign senior adviser Tom Barrack were a “set of nightlife musketeers” in the ’80s and ’90s, managing a phrase that is both ambiguous and terrifying.”
