A New York Times reporter allegedly solicited a $30,000 donation from Jeffrey Epstein to a Harlem cultural center, according to a new report.
The revelation came after the reporter, Landon Thomas Jr., was asked by his editors last year to interview the convicted pedophile about a tip that Epstein was advising Elon Musk on Tesla, NPR reported.
Thomas, a financial correspondent who’s worked with the Times for 16 years, did the sit-down with Epstein, a longtime source of his.
Then, he disclosed to his editor David Enrich that he asked the multimillionaire for the massive donation in 2017.
“It was made clear to Landon that he was never to have any professional contact with Epstein whatsoever,” a source told the Daily Beast. “He wasn’t to call him or speak to him or use him as a source. This was a flagrant breach of NYT ethical guidelines and editors were horrified.”
Tax records obtained by NPR revealed a $30,000 donation in 2017 to a Montessori preschool called O’Gorman Garden in Harlem — granted by a US Virgin Islands-based organization previously controlled by Epstein.
“Soliciting a donation to a personal charity is a clear violation of the policy that governs Times journalists’ relationships with their sources,” Eileen Murphy, chief spokesperson for the Times Co., told the outlet. “As soon as editors became aware of it, they took action.”
Thomas left The Times in January, but his departure was kept quiet, and the reason behind it was never shared with the public, according to NPR and the Daily Beast.
One Times source told the Beast that Thomas was “pushed out” by top business editor Ellen Pollock.
“We wish we had of gotten rid of him sooner,” a person with knowledge of the matter told the outlet. “He should have been fired on the spot.”
In conversations with his colleagues at the Times, Thomas had repeatedly tried to minimize his relationship with Epstein, according to the Daily Beast.
But sources told the outlet that the correspondent refused to give the money manager’s contact information to colleague James Stewart, who was later assigned by the Times to interview Epstein further on the Tesla story.
In an August 2018 interview with Stewart, Epstein called criminalizing sex with teen girls a “cultural aberration.”
Thomas penned a glowing profile on Epstein just as he was about to start a jail sentence in Palm Beach in 2008 — the result of a controversial plea deal.
He declined to comment to NPR, and did not respond to requests for comment from the Daily Beast.
Epstein hanged himself in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center earlier this month while held without bail on sex-trafficking charges.