University of Maine removes former senator George Mitchell’s name over Jeffrey Epstein ties

The University of Maine System’s Board of Trustees voted this week to remove the name of former US Senate majority leader George Mitchell from a building and a scholarship fund, because of his ties to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

The board voted on Monday by 9 votes to 5, with one abstention, to rename the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions on UMaine’s main campus in Orono, as well as the George J. Mitchell Peace Scholarship, which funds a year of postgraduate study at universities in Ireland and Northern Ireland, as the New York Post reports.

Mitchell, now 93, is mentioned more than 300 times in the voluminous files relating to the Epstein case, released by the Department of Justice earlier this year. As late as 2013, the former Democratic senator was scheduled to hold meetings with the disgraced financier, five years after Epstein accepted a plea deal in Florida on two charges of soliciting prostitution, one of them involving a minor.

In December 2018, Epstein described Mitchell as “a very close friend when he was Senate majority leader”, during a message exchange with Steve Bannon. Mitchell has repeatedly denied any personal wrongdoing or knowledge of Epstein’s sexual abuse of young girls.

UMaine officials set up a working group in February to investigate; the investigation concluded: “Although no findings of wrongdoing by Senator Mitchell have been made… the continued use of Senator Mitchell’s name would compromise public trust and reflect negatively on the university and its reputation.”

Background: Mitchell was appointed to the US Senate in 1980, won two full terms, retired from electoral politics in 1995 to become President Bill Clinton’s special envoy for Northern Ireland, and is widely recognised as the negotiator of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. In 2006 he led Major League Baseball’s steroids investigation, known as the Mitchell Report. In February this year, Mitchell resigned as honorary chairman of the Mitchell Institute and his portrait was removed from the State Capitol in Augusta.