In an unexpected turn in the Senate primary race, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton is pushing the idea that an indirect relationship existed between Sen. Ed Markey and reviled sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
But now, Markey is saying an alleged 2015 meeting that serves as the linchpin for the Moulton’s campaign’s argument never happened.
The primary race for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Markey devolved in a debate hosted by GBH and Boston 25 Monday night.
Moulton’s campaign searched through the Department of Justice’s Epstein Library and found that, in 2015, a lobbyist claimed to have met with Markey in an email that was later forwarded to Epstein. That lobbyist was not advocating for Epstein, but for his friend, Karim Wade, the son of a former Senegalese president who had been imprisoned for corruption, and Epstein was footing the bill for the lobbying effort.
Two days later, Markey’s campaign told GBH News that it checked the calendars of the senator and his staff at the time, and that no such meeting occurred.
On GBH’s Boston Public Radio on Wednesday, host Margery Eagan addressed Markey, saying, “Seth Moulton asked you, and I’m going to quote part of what he said: ‘In the newly released Epstein files, your’ — meaning Senator Markey’s — ‘name appears repeatedly. Why would you even take a meeting with a lobbyist on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein?’
“What is your answer to the congressman, and the rest of us?” she asked.
In response, Markey praised the debate moderators for pushing back on Moulton’s accusation Monday night.
“[Moderator Adam Reilly] then said, ‘What evidence do you have?’ And, of course, Congressman Moulton didn’t have any evidence. Because I never had a meeting. I never, at any time, did anything,” Markey said Wednesday.
“I’m telling you right now: There never was a meeting. It was just an indication of how desperate Congressman Moulton is. How he engaged in McCarthy-esque-like smears. How he had no shame in the accusations which he was making. He had no evidence.”
Asked for evidence, Doug Rubin, who’s working on Moulton’s campaign for Senate, pointed back to the email where a lobbyist claims he had met with the senator.
“There is public evidence directly from the Epstein files that clearly indicate Senator Markey took this meeting with a lobbyist who was paid by Jeffrey Epstein,” Rubin said. “Why the senator took this meeting is a legitimate question for the public.”
GBH News could not immediately contact the lobbyist who purportedly met with Markey.
After the debate, Moulton’s campaign posted a lengthy timeline titled “Senator Markey’s Role in the Epstein Files,” citing a subplot from the millions of pages of documents and emails released as the “Epstein files.”
The North Shore congressman’s campaign definitively establishes a relationship between Epstein and Wade. But the ties to Markey are far more tenuous: A lobbyist for Wade then says in an email that they met with Markey once regarding attempts to free Wade from prison.
There is nothing in the lengthy timeline published by Moulton’s campaign that would suggest Markey directly interacted with Epstein at all, or that Markey knew Epstein was backing the lobbyist.
Now Markey and his campaign say that meeting — the only clear indicator of even a distant relationship between the senator and the convicted sex trafficker — never took place.
“I had no meeting on the subject that Moulton is charging me with having had a meeting! There is no meeting!” Markey said on Boston Public Radio. “It is absolutely inaccurate. It is desperate. It is an attempt to engage in the politics of smear.
“It’s just a desperate, unethical attempt to distract from his own activities,” Markey said.
Markey’s campaign spokesperson Jonathan Ng elaborated in follow-up emails.
“Neither Senator Markey nor his staff were briefed by any lobbyists nor had any meetings related to Jeffrey Epstein and the case of Karim Wade,” Ng wrote.
Asked by GBH News to provide copies of calendars or emails regarding the meeting, Ng replied, “To be clear: We do not have calendars for meetings that never happened.”
