TLDR
Lawrence M. Krauss, former Foundation Professor at Arizona State University and founding director of the ASU Origins Project, appears 29,399 times across the Epstein corpus — more than any other identified academic (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026a). The Origins Project received Epstein-linked funding during Krauss's directorship (Aldhous et al., 2018); Krauss publicly defended Epstein after his 2008 conviction (Wolfe, 2011)¹ and retired from ASU in May 2019 following a July 31, 2018 university finding that he had violated the sexual-harassment policy (Rapanut, 2018; Aldhous, 2018b).
The Foundation Professor and Origins
At the time of his most heavily documented Epstein contacts, Krauss held the Foundation Professor title at ASU, directed the ASU Origins Project, and maintained an office in the Sciences School of Earth and Space Exploration (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026a). The corpus corroborates each of these roles: co-occurring entity names include "Arizona State University" (3,400 co-document matches), "asu" (5,025), "The Origins Project" (2,636), "Sciences School of Earth and Space Exploration" (1,925), "Project Co-Director" (1,931), and "Dir, Beyond Center" (1,924).
Krauss launched the Origins Project in 2008 to host public science conferences featuring high-profile scientists. The project's funding came from private donations — some routed through ASU's Research Office, some through an external Origins Project Foundation. BuzzFeed News reported that Epstein was "one of the Origins Project's major donors" (Aldhous et al., 2018).
What the Corpus Shows
Krauss is present in 8,786 dated documents across the corpus (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026a). His strongest co-occurrence with "Jeffrey Epstein" spans 3,075 shared documents, rising to approximately 10,400 when OCR variants of Epstein's name ("JEFFREY," "jeffrey E," "jeffrey E. <") are aggregated. The highest-mention documents are concentrated in iMessage extracts from Epstein's seized forensic phone image dated 2018–2019: EFTA00786667.pdf (90 mentions), EFTA00785782.pdf (86), EFTA00786509.pdf (84), and EFTA00781867.pdf (80) (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026a).
The co-occurring entity "Research Office" (2,393 shared documents) suggests significant ASU institutional correspondence in the corpus. This volume is compatible with — though not proof of — the 2018 sexual-harassment investigation (Rapanut, 2018). Krauss was released under a cluster-size of 1 by Script 19 entity resolution, meaning OCR fragmentation yielded multiple related entity records ("Lawrence Krauss," "Lawrence M. Krauss" with 14,826 mentions, "Krauss" with 9,723) that remain unconsolidated but are confidently the same person.
Epstein Text Messages
The highest-mention Krauss documents (EFTA00785764.pdf, EFTA00785782.pdf, EFTA00786509.pdf, EFTA00786667.pdf, EFTA00781867.pdf) are extracted messages from a forensic phone-device image labeled NYC024362.aff4, containing iMessages between "Lawrence Krauss" and "Self" — where "Self" resolves to the Epstein-associated account jeeitunes@gmail.com. Krauss to Epstein, EFTA00785782.pdf, August 4, 2018: "You will be integral during all my decisions" (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026a). On the day of the BuzzFeed News exposé, EFTA00785764.pdf, August 3, 2018: "Anyway more later. No more now. About to board." On September 13, 2018, as the ASU investigation intensified, EFTA00786509.pdf: "hi.. on plane home. lets talk tomorrow.. got a call last night" — followed later the same day by "Positive? Positive? they are all sympathetic it looks like." On September 17, 2018 (EFTA00786667.pdf), Krauss asked Epstein: "can you perhaps give me the name and phone number of one or two of the lawyers you have spoken to regarding action down the line. It would really help relieve Nancy's anger at the system if we could just talk to a few of them to see what the issues are." On October 10, 2018, EFTA00781867.pdf: "Thank you for everything" (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026a).
The Public Record
In 2011, Krauss told The Daily Beast, "I don't feel tarnished in any way by my relationship with Jeffrey; I feel raised by it" (Wolfe, 2011). He made the statement three years after Epstein's 2008 Florida guilty plea on solicitation charges.
On February 22, 2018, BuzzFeed News published detailed accounts from multiple women alleging sexual harassment by Krauss across more than a decade (Aldhous et al., 2018). ASU placed Krauss on paid administrative leave and prohibited him from being on campus during the subsequent investigation (Banks, 2018). In a letter dated July 31, 2018, ASU Executive Vice President and Provost Mark Searle concluded that Krauss had violated the university's sexual-harassment policy (Rapanut, 2018). ASU did not renew Krauss's Origins Project directorship (Rapanut, 2018). Krauss retired from ASU effective May 2019 (Aldhous, 2018b).
After ASU
Following his ASU departure, Krauss reorganized public-facing operations through The Origins Project Foundation, an independent 501(c)(3) that is not part of Arizona State University (Arizona State University, n.d.). He has continued writing and public-speaking but has not held a full faculty position since 2019. Krauss has consistently denied the harassment allegations (Aldhous et al., 2018).
Of the academics the corpus identifies by direct seed-list resolution, Krauss has the highest mention count (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026a). His case is the clearest example of a professor whose financial, institutional, and rhetorical relationship with Epstein is documented across multiple evidence domains — and whose professional separation from his host institution was documented in near-real-time in the corpus itself.
CTA
Every EFTA document cited above is publicly released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act (Pub. L. No. 119-38, 2025) — pull EFTA00785782.pdf, EFTA00786667.pdf, or any of the other identifiers through the U.S. House Oversight Committee's Epstein disclosure portal and verify the quoted passages in their original context. Once you have, the next profile in the PAPER TRAIL Academic Network series documents the same methodology applied to academics found in the Epstein Files.
About the Methodology
This profile was produced by cross-referencing the full-text Epstein Files corpus — released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act (Pub. L. No. 119-38, 2025) — against a seeded list of publicly documented academic associates. Mention counts, co-occurrence statistics, and top-document rankings were computed from PostgreSQL queries against the project's entity-resolution output, which applied Splink probabilistic record linkage to 2.38 million extracted entities. Every direct quote attributed to an EFTA document was verified verbatim against the on-disk OCR markdown using fuzzy-string matching at a partial_ratio ≥ 95 threshold. Every journalism citation was independently WebFetch-verified for article existence, exact publication date, correct authorship, and that the quoted text appears in the article body. Interpretive characterizations are attributed to their originating source; all factual statements are grounded in either a released EFTA document, an official ASU proceeding, or a named press report listed in the References section below.
Note on "publicly defended" ↩
The TLDR sentence "Krauss publicly defended Epstein after his 2008 conviction" resolves into three atomic factual claims, each grounded in the primary source.
1. "defended" — Wolfe (2011) quotes Krauss verbatim, on the record, in four distinct registers:
"The unfortunate period he suffered." (reframing Epstein's 13-month sex-offense sentence as hardship)
"They're not as young as the ones that were claimed." (disputing the age of accusers)
"My presumption is that I would believe him over other people." (credibility endorsement over victims)
"I don't feel tarnished in any way by my relationship with Jeffrey; I feel raised by it." (personal endorsement)
Wolfe's own editorial frame in the same article introduces Krauss as the example scientist for the sentence: "Renowned scientists whose research Epstein has generously funded through the years also stand by him" (Wolfe, 2011).
2. "publicly" — Wolfe (2011) is an on-the-record interview in The Daily Beast, a national news outlet; Krauss is quoted by name with no "off the record" or "background" caveat. The statements were republished by third parties within days and re-surfaced in 2018 by Aldhous et al. (2018). Krauss has not in fifteen years claimed the quotes were misattributed, taken out of context, or not intended for publication.
3. "after his 2008 conviction" — Epstein entered a Florida guilty plea on June 30, 2008 (two state counts including solicitation of a minor), completed a 13-month sentence on July 22, 2009, and the Wolfe interview was published on April 1, 2011 — two years and nine months after the plea, one year and eight months after release. Wolfe (2011) situates the statements as post-conviction in its own opening paragraphs.
Legal posture. Under Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1 (1990), characterizing someone's disclosed statements as "defending" another person is protected opinion when the underlying statements are disclosed so a reader can evaluate them independently — which this note does. Under New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), Krauss as a public figure would have to prove actual malice, which cannot lie where the characterization tracks his own verbatim words.
Defensibility summary. The Daily Beast, April 1, 2011, quotes Professor Krauss saying, of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, "I don't feel tarnished in any way by my relationship with Jeffrey; I feel raised by it" and "my presumption is that I would believe him over other people" — published two years and nine months after Epstein's June 30, 2008 guilty plea. The TLDR sentence summarizes that interview accurately.
References
Aldhous, P. (2018b, October 21). Celebrity physicist Lawrence Krauss will retire from Arizona State in wake of harassment investigation. BuzzFeed News. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/lawrence-krauss-retires-arizona-state-settlement
Aldhous, P., Ghorayshi, A., & Hughes, V. (2018, February 22). A star physicist has been accused of sexual misconduct. BuzzFeed News. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/lawrence-krauss-sexual-harassment-allegations
Arizona State University. (n.d.). Origins Project at Arizona State University. Retrieved April 16, 2026, from https://origins.asu.edu
Banks, M. (2018, March 7). Lawrence Krauss banned from Arizona State University campus following misconduct allegations. Physics World. https://physicsworld.com/a/lawrence-krauss-banned-from-arizona-state-university-campus-following-misconduct-allegations/
Epstein Files Transparency Act, Pub. L. No. 119-38 (2025). https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4405
PAPER TRAIL Project. (2026a). Professor evidence packet: Lawrence Krauss [Data set]. _exports/academics/professor_evidence/lawrence_krauss.json
PAPER TRAIL Project. (2026b). Academic identification: Seeded resolution of 30 university professors [Computer software]. app/scripts/34_academic_identification.py
Rapanut, K. (2018, August 7). Lawrence Krauss violated ASU sexual harassment policies, investigation shows. The State Press. https://www.statepress.com/article/2018/08/spscience-asu-investigation-states-lawrence-krauss-groped-woman-while-on-asu-funded-trip
Wolfe, A. (2011, April 1). Katie Couric, Woody Allen: Jeffrey Epstein's society friends close ranks. The Daily Beast. https://www.thedailybeast.com/katie-couric-woody-allen-jeffrey-epsteins-society-friends-close-ranks
This investigation is part of the SubThesis accountability journalism network.