Often times outside law firms handle investigations like this. MIT clearly had some failed policies where they were laundering the reputation of a despicable person for donations, which shouldn't happen. An internal investigation would be strongly biased to find no wrong-doing. Ostensibly, an outside investigation is more neutral (even though MIT is still paying for it so they're clearly biased to be soft too...)
I found noteworthy that MIT recognized the risk of bias and attempted to control for it by retaining a second law firm (that had no history of working with MIT, whereas the first firm they retained has been used by MIT for previous tasks).
> An internal investigation would be strongly biased to find no wrong-doing.
Yes, if there is a bias, it needs to come from somewhere? If feel it is like saying "If you haven't made a crime, you don't need an attorney." This doesn't make sense for most of people on your side of Atlantic, but try to get the rationale behind that.
Similarly, if they began talking of settlement fund, then for what they set it for to begin with, if this is a complete BS?
Well, the law firm in this case is basically an extension of MIT's in-house counsel. MIT has a long, long history with them, including whistleblower intimidation and other cover-ups.
This is answered in part in the final q; so that the inquiry could have independence from MIT’s general counsel:
> When Epstein’s donations to MIT were revealed, MIT’s general counsel retained Goodwin Procter, a law firm that has worked with the Institute in the past and that has extensive experience conducting internal investigations at academic institutions. That background allowed the firm to get up to speed quickly as it began its review. Soon thereafter, the Executive Committee engaged the law firm Paul Weiss, which also has extensive experience leading internal investigations and advising boards of directors but no prior relationship with MIT. From a governance perspective, the Executive Committee felt Paul Weiss’s independence from the Institute was valuable.
The report concludes that President L. Rafael Reif was not aware that the Institute was accepting donations from a convicted sex offender and accused pedophile
Following one of the two $50,000 donations, staff prepared a standard gift-acknowledgment letter to Epstein, and President Reif signed it on Aug. 16, 2012
To conduct a fact-finding operation regarding MIT (and its members') interactions with Epstein and donations contributed by him to the university or its members.
