Time’s Up Founding Member and CAA Higher Up Once Advised Jeffrey Epstein: ‘Elite Hypocrisy’

One of the founding members of Time’s Up — the 2018 movement that began in the wake of Harvey Weinstein’s fall from grace — advised Jeffrey Epstein, documents released by the Department of Justice have revealed.

“You probably have good advisors on this, but one person I go to these days is one of my best friends Michelle Kydd Lee,” Joichi “Joi” Ito, former director of the MIT Media Lab, wrote to Epstein in 2014, as first reported by Page Six Hollywood.

“She’s the founder and head of the CAA Foundation and sort of the ‘mother’ of Hollywood,” Ito added of Kydd Lee, who now goes by Kydd. “She’s the one everyone goes to when famous people under the protection of CAA go to when they get in trouble. I’ve talked to her about you and I’m sure she would probably have pretty good advice on this.”

Kydd, who is also chief innovation officer of the powerful Hollywood talent agency, then wrote to Epstein in 2016, two years before Time’s Up was launched with an open letter signed by A-listers including Reese Witherspoon, Natalie Portman and Shonda Rhimes.

At the time Kydd wrote her email, the late billionaire was a registered sex offender, having already been convicted and served prison time for soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14.

“Here are two people that are based in N= [sic] that come HIGHLY recommended. I have not us=d [sic] them personally but others have and think they are best in class,” she wrote, with links to people who worked in crisis PR, per Page Six Hollywood. “Hope this is helpful.”

“It is elite hypocrisy that she maintains a hot seat at CAA,” a source tells the National Enquirer of Kydd.

In 2019, Epstein was arrested for sex trafficking minors. He died while in jail awaiting trial that year.

Time’s Up ceased operating in January 2023, a year and a half after an investigative report from the New York state attorney general’s office accused then-chairwoman Roberta Kaplan of being involved in an effort to discredit one of Andrew Cuomo‘s alleged sexual harassment victims, per the New York Times.