Bob Kerrey, the former U.S. senator from Nebraska, has resigned from the board of a clean energy start-up in the state after documents released by the Department of Justice indicated that Mr. Kerrey and Jeffrey Epstein had met and corresponded over email more than a decade ago.
Mr. Kerrey confirmed the resignation, which occurred on Friday, over text message on Wednesday, saying that he resigned from the company, Monolith, because he was concerned the revelations would “make it difficult for them to succeed.”
“I will offer no defense of my meetings with Jeffrey Epstein,” Mr. Kerrey said. “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have said yes to a meeting.”
The correspondence occurred several years after Mr. Epstein, the financier who died by suicide in 2019 while facing sex-trafficking charges, had pleaded guilty in 2008 to charges of solicitation of prostitution with a minor.
Monolith, the Nebraska start-up, is an energy company that focuses on producing low-emission hydrogen and carbon black, a substance used in tires and other rubber products. Mr. Kerrey had been chairman of the board, a position he had held for years. Monolith did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Kerrey, 82, served as a U.S. senator from 1989 to 2001, was the governor of Nebraska in the 1980s and ran for president in 1992. He met with Mr. Epstein in 2013, a few years after a stint leading the New School in New York City, where he was president from 2001 to 2010 and president emeritus until 2013.
Files released by the Justice Department show that Mr. Kerrey and Mr. Epstein met at least twice in early 2013. In February of that year, Mr. Kerrey responded to an email invitation to meet Mr. Epstein at his house while Bill Gates would be there. Mr. Kerrey said he would be out of town but had enjoyed meeting and talking with Mr. Epstein at an earlier lunch. “Invite me again!” Mr. Kerrey said in the email.
That May, Mr. Kerrey sent Mr. Epstein an email that said, “Thanks for breakfast. It was great being with you.”
Further correspondence indicated that the two tried to meet again several times in 2013 and 2014, including invitations for lunches and dinners with Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister; the filmmaker Woody Allen; and the PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel.
Mr. Kerrey said over text that he remembered meeting Mr. Epstein once, although there could have been more meetings that he did not recall.
He added that he believed focusing on his connections to Mr. Epstein was counterproductive to achieving justice for the victims of Mr. Epstein’s crimes.
“There are victims in this story and I am not one of them,” he said. “The victims are women who were abused by Epstein and his friends when they were children.”
Amy Malsin, a spokeswoman for the New School, said in a statement that the university had reviewed the correspondence between Mr. Kerrey and Mr. Epstein in the documents released by the Department of Justice.
“Those interactions appear to have been limited and there is no indication that they were related to the activities of the New School,” she said. “We regret that any member of our community had any association with Mr. Epstein, whose crimes were reprehensible.”
Mr. Kerrey’s resignation came after the Nebraska Republican Party last week called on political candidates, all of whom appeared to be Democratic or Independent, to return donations from Mr. Kerrey, who is a Democrat. The Nebraska Republican Party cited campaign finance records that showed Mr. Kerrey donated to several campaigns last year, including the U.S. Senate campaign of Dan Osborn and the congressional campaign of John Cavanaugh.Mr. Cavanaugh said in a statement that he donated Mr. Kerrey’s contribution to a Nebraska nonprofit that works to end sexual and domestic violence once the ties with Mr. Epstein were brought to his attention. Mr. Osborn could not be reached for comment.
Sonia A. Rao reports on disability issues as a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early-career journalists.
The post Former Senator Bob Kerrey Resigns From Nebraska Start-Up Amid Epstein Emails appeared first on New York Times.
