Newly unearthed tax documents for the Humpty Dumpty Institute (HDI), a purportedly U.S.-based nonprofit that has ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), reveal that Mark Epstein left his position as a board member sometime in the 2022 reporting cycle.
The IRS form 990 filed by HDI for 2022 features just eight names on its board, down from 11 in 2021. The 2022 filing which does not include Mark Epstein’s name was filed late in November 2023.
Among those who apparently left the board in 2022 is Mark Epstein, who is brother to Jeffrey Epstein, the sex offender and financier who infamously died in 2019 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.
A series of publicly available tax documents reviewed by Valiant News show Mark Epstein was listed as a Director at HDI in previous years dating back to at least 2018, and a United Nations document shows Mark Epstein was already affiliated with the group in 1999.
Additionally, the HDI website indicates Mark Epstein has been publicly working with HDI since at least 2007.
In November 2007, Mark Epstein was among a delegation of HDI board members who “traveled to Sri Lanka and Laos” to “review The Humpty Dumpty Institute’s mine action programs and to raise awareness of the continued scourge of landmines and unexploded ordinances around the world.”
By 2012, Mark Epstein was part of an HDI delegation that visited the United Nations headquarters. In 2014, Mark Epstein met with the Congressional Black Caucus during its own visit to the United Nations.
During that meeting, Mark Epstein led a “working dinner” that “featured U.N. Secretariat officials and diplomats” who “received an update on HDI’s activities in areas of congressional affairs, cultural diplomacy and higher education.”
The most recent article on the HDI website to mention Mark Epstein was published on April 30, 2019, and indicates he traveled alongside an HDI-affiliated congressional delegation that visited Antwerp, Belgium “to increase trade and investment” between the country and the United States.
Valiant News attempted to contact Mark Epstein to seek clarification about HDI, his role at the nonprofit, and why he left in 2022 amid several news reports about the group, but did not receive a response prior to press time.
Former Valiant News reporter Andrew White was the first journalist to confirm that Mark Epstein was affiliated with HDI in 2021. Other media outlets that have since covered HDI and its connection to both Republicans and Democrats in Congress include Breitbart, Washington Examiner, and Newsmax.
As noted by the Washington Examiner, HDI has “touted its partnership with the Beijing-based Taihe Institute think tank” since at least 2017. The Taihe Institute, the outlet explained, “employs over a dozen current and former members of the CCP and people’s Liberation Army as senior fellows.”
The Examiner also noted that Taihe openly considers the United States a “failed country.”
Prior to the recent spate of reporting The Daily Beast reported that Mark Epstein loaned HDI $100,000 in 2014.
Most recently, the Texas-based publication Current Revolt reported that HDI paid for U.S. Representative Tony Gonzales to travel to Ukraine in 2021. Gonzales narrowly won his primary runoff on Tuesday, beating pro-gun YouTube star Brandon Herrera by less than 1% of the vote.
While the death of Jeffrey Epstein was officially ruled a suicide, many have continued to express doubts, and Mark Epstein told independent reporter Tucker Carlson in January that he does not believe his brother took his own life.
“Nobody thought he was going to kill himself, nobody thought he would do that,” Mark Epstein told Carlson.
