Major NYU donor and Stern board member John Paulson was named “one of the billionaires” in Jeffrey Epstein’s contact list last week by Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, who is spearheading a bill to release all files related to the convicted sex offender.
Paulson, who funds a super PAC “running $2 million of ads” against Massie amid his push to release the Epstein files, is listed in Epstein’s second “black book” that was published by Business Insider in 2021. The full undisclosed list contains names, contact information and addresses of 349 people with suspected affiliation with Epstein — who dropped out of NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 1974 — dating back to 1997.
Paulson’s name was also publicly listed in the first “black book,” published by former blog site Gawker in 2015 and containing 1,748 other names dating back to 2004. Being listed in the books does not directly indicate criminal activity.
“If John Paulson is in Epstein’s black book, it’s news to him. He never shared a meal or even a drink with Epstein,” a spokesperson for Paulson’s investment firm Paulson & Co. told Newsweek in a statement. “This is a weak attempt to imply a relationship with Epstein that never existed at any level or of any kind.”
The billionaire hedge fund manager graduated from NYU’s Stern School of Business in 1978 and has been one of the university’s most prominent donors since 2009. As of 2023, Paulson gifted at least $146,000,200 to NYU — with more than a decade of yearly donations ranging from $100,000 to $20,200,200. The $1.2 billion John A. Paulson Center opened in 2023 with funds from Paulson’s $100 million gift to the university in 2012 — “among the largest NYU has ever received at its Washington Square Campus.”
Paulson also chairs Stern’s Altman-Paulson Initiative on Credit & Distressed Opportunities advisory board, sits on the school’s executive board and is the namesake of its John A. Paulson Auditorium. He left NYU’s overarching Board of Trustees in 2022, five years after the Student Labor Action Movement condemned his close associations with President Donald Trump .
In April 2024, Paulson held a $50 million fundraiser at his Palm Beach mansion for then-candidate Trump, which Trump called the “biggest night in Fund Raising of ALL TIME” in a Truth Social post. He also hosted a pro-Trump undraiser in Manhattan with two other billionaires the next month. Although Paulson was floated to be Trump’s treasury secretary, he dropped out due to “complex financial obligations” and pledged to “remain actively involved with the President’s economic team.”
An NYU spokesperson did not respond to request for comment.
Contact Amanda Chen at [email protected].
