The University of Maine System’s Board of Trustees voted this week to remove the name of former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell from a building and a scholarship fund over his links to late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The board voted 9-5 Monday with one abstention to rename the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions on UMaine’s flagship campus in Orono as well as the George J. Mitchell Peace Scholarship, which funds one year of post-graduate studies at universities in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Mitchell, now 93, is mentioned more than 300 times in voluminous files related to the Epstein case that were released by the Department of Justice earlier this year. As late as 2013, the former Democratic senator was scheduled to take meetings with the disgraced financier, five years after Epstein accepted a sweetheart plea deal in which he copped to two Florida counts of soliciation of prostitution, with one count involving a minor.
In December 2018, Epstein described Mitchell as “a very close friend when senate majority leader” during a text exchange with former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon.
Mitchell has repeatedly denied personal wrongdoing or knowledge of Epstein’s sexual abuse of young girls.
UMaine officials established a task force in February to investigate whether Mitchell’s name should be removed from university property following the release of the Epstein files The probe concluded: “While no findings of wrongdoing by Senator Mitchell have been made, in light of the material that has recently been made public by the US Department of Justice, and mindful of the experiences of victims and survivors, the task force concludes that continued use of Senator Mitchell’s name would compromise the public trust and reflect adversely upon the university and its reputation.”
Mitchell was appointed to the US Senate in 1980 and later won two full terms before retiring from electoral politics in 1995 to become then-President Bill Clinton’s special envoy for Northern Ireland. In that position, he was widely credited with negotiating the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that all but ended decades of sectarian conflict.
In 2006, Mitchell was tapped by then-baseball commissioner Bud Selig to investigate steroid and performance-enhancing drug use in America’s pastime. The Mitchell Report, released in December 2007, identified 89 current and former players as confirmed or suspected drug cheats, with Yankees ace Roger Clemens the biggest name on the list.
MLB stepped up its drug testing regimen following the release of the report and began instituting tougher punishments, with players banned 80 games for a first positive test, a full 162-game season for a second positive test, and for life after a third positive test.
In February of this year, Mitchell resigned as honorary chairman of the Mitchell Institute, which awards college scholarships to Maine public high school students. That same month, his portrait was removed from the walls of the State House in Augusta, where it was displayed alongside other notable Maine politicians.
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