“Your responses frankly make me concerned about your ability to serve on an awards committee,” Hoffman wrote.

But Hoffman did: The entrepreneur accused Giridharadas of being dramatic, according to the author. Ito-who not only cultivated Epstein’s patronage of the Media Lab but also took more than a million dollars for his own personal investments-did not respond to Giridharadas. Giridharadas, shaken by the revelations of Ito’s ties to Epstein and on the verge of resignation, wrote to Hoffman, Ito, and his fellow jurors requesting that Ito’s correspondence with Epstein be made public. It happened in a testy email exchange that was revealed by the writer Anand Giridharadas, who served on the selection jury for an award given by the lab. Then in late August, the LinkedIn cofounder sprang to the defense of Joi Ito, then the director of the MIT Media Lab, who reportedly concealed donations from the convicted multimillionaire sex offender. Musk and Zuckerberg distanced themselves from Epstein in comments after the story ran, but Hoffman did not. In July, Vanity Fair reported that Hoffman hosted a dinner a few years ago that brought together accused sex trafficker Epstein, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg at a dinner in Palo Alto organized to honor the MIT neuroscientist Ed Boyden.

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