Students at the University of Maryland, College Park, will vote this week on whether a system regent with ties to Jeffrey Epstein should step down.

The campus-wide referendum calls for the ouster of second-term regent Tom McMillen, a former U.S. representative and professional basketball player who briefly corresponded with the convicted child sex offender in 2013, according to files released by the U.S. Justice Department. McMillen has called the interaction with Epstein “incidental” and suggested that the student government association, which wrote the referendum, had an ulterior motive.

They really want him out because of his past support for Israel, he said. The group has condemned both that support and Israel itself.

“The Epstein thing is just a smoke screen, a Trojan horse,” McMillen said in an interview. “This vote is a form of McCarthyism. It’s a scarlet letter. It’s the Salem witch trials.”

A representative for the student government disagreed with that characterization, insisting the referendum has nothing to do with the group’s position on Israel.

Even if a majority of students at the state’s flagship university vote to remove McMillen from the University System of Maryland’s governing board, they don’t have the power to make him leave. Regents are appointed by lawmakers.

Officials at the system and the University of Maryland, College Park, declined to comment on the vote.

But the student government association has brought public attention to the matter, prompting the second-term regent to defend himself in an open letter.

The student government’s allegations, McMillen wrote, “are based on limited, decades-old, and tangential interactions ... and distorted to fit a narrative.”

McMillen told The Banner that he met Epstein when the disgraced financier was a small contributor to his congressional campaign; McMillen represented Maryland’s 4th District, which covers parts of Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, from 1987 to 1993. That connection made headlines in 2019 when McMillen was spotted in a widely circulated video with Epstein and an associate at a 1992 party hosted by Donald Trump.

Then last year, the Justice Department released millions of documents, videos and images detailing Epstein’s crimes and connections to the world’s most powerful figures, known as the Epstein files. McMillen appears in them twice.

In January 2013, an unnamed person emailed Epstein stating that McMillen “asked about” him. It included redacted contact information for the regent.

Another record showed that in February 2013, Epstein emailed McMillen asking when he would be in New York next.

McMillen’s reply: “I just got back from Costa Rica and heading to cabo in a week so it may be late March. Hope you are well.”

Hasan Islam, a senior at the university who serves as speaker pro tempore for the student government association, said he was surprised to see a regent in the Epstein files and immediately began drafting a resolution when he learned of the connection.

“The smoking gun is him communicating with Jeffrey Epstein after he was already convicted,” Islam said. “This guy has to go, it’s insane.”

Islam said this week’s referendum wasn’t about McMillen’s past support for Israel, but the student government brought up both issues in a resolution last month that called for his resignation.

The group has vocally supported Palestine in recent months; they urged the university to call the Israel-Palestine conflict a genocide, boycott and divest investments from Israel and bar Israel Defense Forces soldiers from speaking at a campus event.

Islam said he joined the student government association not to make on-campus improvements, but to speak out about the war.

The student government’s resolution alleged McMillen’s “support of Israeli apartheid.”

McMillen voted to send money to Israel while he was an elected official in the 1990s. In his open letter last week, he said his policy positions at the time “were taken thoughtfully and represent my values.”

When he participated in the 1972 Olympic Games, 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were killed by Palestinian terrorists linked to the Fatah group. In 2012, McMillen told The Wall Street Journal it was “the most bitter and painful experience” of his life.

In an interview with The Banner, McMillen called Maryland’s student government “very extremist” and a “fringe student group.” The Maryland alum said this week’s vote was emblematic of what he believes is a problem with antisemitism at the 42,000-student university.

“I’ve heard from many Jewish students that they feel threatened,” he said. “I think it’s a very real problem at Maryland and other campuses.”

On Monday morning, university President Darryll Pines sent a campus-wide email announcing an active investigation into an alleged hate crime targeting a Jewish student.

Islam said he does not believe there is an antisemitism problem at the university, instead accusing the campus of having an anti-Arab bias. He said he’s been doxxed and harassed for his views on Palestine.

“It’s completely insane that Tom McMillen would take the time to blame this on the Israel stuff,” he said. “If I was being accused of being in association with Jeffrey Epstein, that would be my most pressing concern.”

Members of the student government association are encouraging other student governments across the university system to submit their own resolutions, Islam said. College Park’s vote will conclude on Wednesday.

“This is a very populist thing,” he said. “This guy has got to resign.”

About the Education Hub

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