Calls for Ito to resign were followed by a website (wesupportjoi.org) and letter in support of Ito which appeared in late August signed by more than 100 people including Lawrence Lessig, Stewart Brand, Nicholas Negroponte, Jonathan Zittrain, and George M. Church. However, the website was taken down after further details emerged. Ito later admitted to taking $525,000 in funding from Epstein for the lab, and permitting Epstein to invest 1.2 million in Ito's personal investment funds. On September 6, 2019, an article by Ronan Farrow in "The New Yorker" alleged that the lab led by Ito had "a deeper fund-raising relationship with Epstein" than it had acknowledged, and that the lab attempted to conceal the extent of its contacts with him. The article, based on leaked emails between Epstein, Ito and others, alleged that "Ito and other lab employees took numerous steps to keep Epstein’s name from being associated with the donations he made or solicited," that Ito specifically solicited individual donations from Epstein. The article further claimed that Epstein "appeared to serve as an intermediary between the lab and other wealthy donors, soliciting millions of dollars in donations from individuals and organizations" and that "Epstein was credited with securing at least $7.5 million in donations for the lab." Ito, in an email to "The New York Times," said "The New Yorker" report was “full of factual errors.” According to Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig the anonymity of the Jeffrey Epstein donations was to avoid "whitewashing" Epstein's reputation and not to conceal the relationship between Ito and Epstein. The president of MIT launched an "immediate, thorough and independent" investigation into the "extremely serious" and "deeply disturbing allegations about the engagement between individuals at the Media Lab and Jeffrey Epstein." In September of 2019, Ito resigned as director of the Media Lab and as an MIT professor shortly after "The New Yorker" article. "The New York Times" reported that Ito resigned from his visiting professorship at Harvard University, in addition he relinquished a number of other roles on September 7 amid the controversy: