Epstein-linked billionaire Glenn Dubin stepped down from Mount Sinai board earlier this year

Last month, the congressman Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, alleged on the floor of the House of Representatives that Glenn Dubin was one of 14 “Epstein co-conspirators” who ought to face investigation and possible prosecution. A spokesperson for Glenn Dubin did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment about Massie’s statement.

Massie also named Leon Black, another Wall Street billionaire tied to Epstein who also served on the board of Mount Sinai hospital.

“Perhaps hearing these names,” said Massie, “will shame the Department of Justice into delivering justice.”

Black has said he is the target of a political witch-hunt. Last month, Congress voted unanimously to hold Black in contempt for refusing to comply with subpoenas issued by the House committee on oversight, which demanded that he appear for a deposition and provide the committee with all his nondisclosure agreements. Black, who has denied having any knowledge of Epstein’s alleged crimes and has sued the House committee for allegedly overstepping its authority, served on Mount Sinai’s board of trustees from 2001 to 2012. He also served on the board of its Icahn School of Medicine through 2024. In 2000 Black and his wife endowed the Debra and Leon Black Professor of Pediatrics chair at Icahn; in 2005, they established Mount Sinai’s Black Family Stem Cell Institute.

Attorney Brad Karp has served on the Mount Sinai board since 2019. He was the longtime chairman of the Paul, Weiss law firm until he resigned from that position earlier this year after emails released in the Epstein files revealed extensive personal and business communications with Epstein. Paul, Weiss has said that Karp “regrets” his interactions with Epstein. Karp remains on Mount Sinai’s board.

According to the justice department files released in January, Epstein donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Mount Sinai and its medical school in the years following his 2008 conviction on state charges. In 2019, in the wake of Epstein’s death in jail by suicide, the hospital said it was “contributing a sum equal to the donations we received from Mr Epstein and his foundation to a charity focused on preventing human trafficking and exploitation”.

Mount Sinai declined to answer questions about how much money it donated, and to whom.

The Epstein files indicate that Epstein’s donations to Mount Sinai gave him “VIP” status at the hospital. According to a report in the New York Times, Dr Jess Ting, an assistant professor of surgery at Mount Sinai, sewed 35 stitches into the forehead of a young Russian woman inside Epstein’s townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side after the woman injured herself, in October of 2012, while riding an ATV on Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean. Alongside its article, the New York Times published an undated color photograph that appeared to show the surgeon performing the procedure in Epstein’s dining room.

In February 2013, four months after the procedure in his dining room, Epstein directed his accountant, Richard Kahn, to make out a check to Mount Sinai for $50,000 which, according to an email written by Ting, was “earmarked” for his research. When, four years later, Ting co-authored an article about an experiment related to “aggressive sporadic breast cancer” in Clinical Cancer Research, a peer-reviewed medical journal, the article’s acknowledgements noted that the research was supported by donations from, among others, “Jeffrey Epstein to JT”.

Tax records for the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai show Ting received $4.6m in compensation in 2019.

Mount Sinai did not respond to questions about whether Ting faced any consequences from the hospital for having apparently performed the procedure in Epstein’s home. Ting did not respond to questions from the Guardian.

The New York state department of health was asked to comment about the medical procedure apparently being performed in Epstein’s dining room and whether it was investigating the matter. In a statement, the department of health said:“While the department cannot discuss or provide details pertaining to active investigations, the allegations in recent media reports are deeply troubling and clearly warrant review. As regulator of New York state hospitals and diagnostic and treatment centers, the Department of Health holds all facilities accountable for the quality of care they provide to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all patients. The New York State Department of Health condemns any abuse that undermines patient trust and safety, including any predatory or unlawful behavior, and takes its responsibility to investigate allegations like this very seriously. We extend our support to all victims and survivors of medical misconduct, physical abuse, or sexual abuse and encourage any patient who believes they are a victim of misconduct to file a complaint.”

In 2010, the Dubins established Mount Sinai’s Dubin Breast Center, which is now a 15,000 sq ft facility inside Mount Sinai’s main campus on the Upper East Side. The center’s entrance on Fifth Avenue is marked by a large hot-pink awning with the words “Dubin Breast Center” imprinted on it in white.

The Epstein files reveal that Andersson-Dubin and Epstein communicated frequently about many topics, and that she reportedly served as Epstein’s “conduit” to Mount Sinai. In April of 2012, according to emails released by the justice department, Andersson-Dubin, at Epstein’s request, sought to help a young Russian woman attain a volunteer position at the Dubin Breast Center.

When Mount Sinai’s director of international personnel stated that the “volunteer tasks” that the “foreign national” was seeking to perform “potentially conflict with the duties designated for the union”, Andersson-Dubin wrote to Epstein that the young woman could “sit there and just look pretty … if that makes it better!! This woman … has something against Russian girls I think … ,” to which Epstein replied simply: “socialism.” Ultimately, after Andersson-Dubin made an appeal to the hospital, the volunteer position was approved.

A spokesperson for the Dubins did not respond to questions about the alleged incident. Mount Sinai declined to comment.

Celina Dubin, the Dubins’ daughter, was a student at the Icahn School of Medicine and is now an assistant professor of dermatology at Mount Sinai.

The daughters of two other billionaires linked to Epstein, both of whom have testified in Congress about their relationships with him, have also attended Mount Sinai’s medical school: Bill Gates’s daughter, who graduated in 2024 and is now a pediatric resident at the hospital, and US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick’s daughter, who is currently enrolled there.

Last month, the US district judge Jed Rakoff, who has presided over all the Epstein-victim class action lawsuits filed against banking institutions – suits which, to date, have yielded $438m in settlements – ruled that the newest of these, brought against FirstBank Puerto Rico by Boies Schiller Flexner and Edwards Henderson, could proceed.

According to that lawsuit, Epstein’s donations to Mount Sinai, which included at least $50,000 drawn from his Enhanced Education account at FirstBank Puerto Rico in June 2014, were “directly used to fund” his illegal activities. In addition, the lawsuit alleges, Mount Sinai was “linked to individuals known to have recruited for him”. The lawsuit does not specify the names of those linked to Mount Sinai who it alleges “recruited” for Epstein.

Mount Sinai declined to comment on the lawsuit.

FirstBank said in a legal filing that while it provided “routine banking services” to Epstein, it did not violate anti-trafficking laws or knowingly facilitate his alleged crimes. The bank also said it filed a suspicious activity report (SAR) shortly after Epstein’s 2019 arrest.

A group of Mount Sinai employees, including female doctors, filed a separate federal employment discrimination lawsuit against Mount Sinai Health System, its Icahn School of Medicine, and various current and former male Mount Sinai officials in April 2019.

The lawsuit alleges, among other things, that one of the defendants, a Mount Sinai doctor, “regularly called women ‘bitches’ and ‘cunts’”. The case now awaits a ruling on a motion for summary judgment brought by Mount Sinai before the US district judge Vernon Broderick.

In a legal filing, Mount Sinai called the complaint “nothing less than a malicious instrument of character assassination” that was “rife with allegations that are immaterial and/or scandalous”. “The Epstein connection is what gets attention, but that kind of culture never has just one victim or kind of victim. When powerful institutions let their men mistreat women, it’s usually a feature, not a bug,” said Ann Olivarius, head of the McAllister Olivarius law firm, which filed the 2019 suit against Mount Sinai.

Mount Sinai did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about the lawsuit.

This past summer, outside of Mount Sinai’s annual Crystal Party fundraiser held at Chelsea Piers downtown, volunteers supporting Equity Now, an organization formed by the former Mount Sinai employees who sued the hospital, handed out fliers that featured photographs of its current and former Epstein-linked board members: Glenn Dubin, Brad Karp and Leon Black.

“WOULD YOU LET THESE MEN RUN YOUR PTA?” asked the text above the pictures. “SO WHY WERE THEY RUNNING MOUNT SINAI?”

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