Epstein’s Lawyer Sought to Vet, Influence Victims’ Attorneys

Jeffrey Epstein’s defense team, in an effort led by Jay Lefkowitz from Kirkland & Ellis, pressured officials at the Justice Department about the legal representation of Epstein’s victims, according to files released in January.

Experts say the defense team’s conduct amidst the negotiations for the disgraced financier’s 2007 plea deal was an unusual use of influence.

Lefkowitz, along with other lawyers representing Epstein, pressed the victims’ lawyer to take out-of-court settlements and to waive their right to sue Epstein under federal law, the emails and letters show. Lefkowitz recently announced that he plans to retire from the firm this spring.

Lefkowitz joined Epstein’s defense team in 2007. At the time, they were negotiating the plea deal with federal prosecutors in South Florida to ward off a 60-count indictment related to the sex trafficking of minors. Investigators had identified 34 victims who said Epstein sexually abused them or trafficked them to other people. Epstein’s lawyers and Department of Justice attorneys have been highly criticized for the agreement for years.

The documents detail how Lefkowitz pushed prosecutors to let him vet and influence the government’s selection of an independent lawyer to represent Epstein’s victims, inserting language into the deal that limited what that lawyer could do while Epstein would foot the bill. When Alex Acosta, the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, rejected the proposals, Lefkowitz indicated he would escalate the issue “in Washington.” Kirkland lawyers would then complain to DOJ leaders in the nation’s capital. Lefkowitz had worked as senior advisor to then-President George W. Bush and while working at Kirkland was serving as Bush’s human rights envoy to North Korea.

“If I were to put myself in Epstein’s shoes, paying for them and threatening to withhold the money seems to be a way of controlling the entire situation,” said Shea Rhodes, director and co-founder of the Villanova Law Institute to Address Commercial Sexual Exploitation, which educates both criminal defense attorneys and prosecutors on survivors’ rights and sex trafficking laws. “It doesn’t matter who’s paying the lawyer’s bills. The lawyer still works for the client, not the person who’s paying the bills.”

Epstein eventually pleaded guilty to state charges of procuring a minor for prostitution in 2008 and served a year in prison.

The documents shed new light on the approach that Epstein’s legal defense team used to protect the powerful hedge fund mogul for years.

“Their job was to protect his criminal liability in that case and not to rig the civil litigation system against the victims,” Scott Cummings, a legal ethics professor at UCLA’s School of Law, claimed. “That’s not something that you should do.”

The tactics appeared to work. Lefkowitz succeeded in pressuring prosecutors to change language in the plea bargain, giving Epstein the right to approve or reject the independent lawyer picked by the government to represent the victims. Lefkowitz avoided the government’s appointment of protective guardianship for the underage girls and scrapped wording that required the attorney’s firm to have experience handling multiple trials at once.

Lefkowitz, Acosta, and Kirkland & Ellis did not respond to requests for comment from Bloomberg Law.

It’s ultimately on the prosecution for allowing the concessions, Cummings said.

“Their obligation is to protect the integrity of the process and to make sure that the victims would have some say, not just to give in to the Kirkland lawyers,” he said.

Victims’ rights attorney Carrie Goldberg described the defense team’s maneuvers as “extraordinary,” and “absurd”.

“We do see these kinds of negotiations with very high net-worth people accused of crimes who hire these super fancy lawyers who make the government bend to their will,” Goldberg said.

But she said this isn’t normal.

“What’s extraordinary about this situation is just the amount of control that Epstein’s lawyers are asserting over everybody in the process — the DOJ, as well as the guardian for the victims,” Goldberg said.

Satisfying Concern

Their effort to distance the women Epstein abused as girls from pathways to sue Epstein began in the fall of 2007.

Lefkowitz requested the US Attorney’s Office remove language from the draft non-prosecution deal that would require the government to appoint a guardian ad litem to represent up to 40 identified victims, who could pursue monetary damages from Epstein under federal law. He repeatedly questioned the need for a guardian in emails to A. Marie Villafaña, the assistant US attorney handling the federal Epstein investigation. Lefkowitz built a reputation representing high-profile clients, including major healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, throughout his three-decade plus tenure at Kirkland, where his online profile boasts about Kirkland being a “feared” litigation firm.

“You may want to consider simply appointing a representative,” Lefkowitz wrote to her in September 2007. “We would agree to someone you considered appropriate. I am just not sure the guardian is the right procedural vehicle.”

Later that day, when Epstein signed the non-prosecution agreement, the section outlining legal representation had changed. They would be represented not by a guardian ad litem but by an attorney picked by the US Attorney’s Office and approved by Epstein. The agreement also stated that the Palm Beach financier would pay that attorney’s fees.

John Browning, a retired Texas appellate justice and legal ethics professor at Faulkner University’s Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, described Epstein paying for his victims’ legal representation and having any say over who that was as “highly unusual.” It’s one thing to pay into a victims’ compensation fund or be ordered to pay restitution, but such an arrangement is “beyond the pale,” he said.

Over the next few weeks, Lefkowitz screened and scrutinized lawyers Villafaña proposed, while floating names he preferred, according to the emails.

When prosecutors decided to appoint an independent party, which they called a special master, to pick the victims’ attorney instead, Lefkowitz pushed to place limits on who the special master could choose, questioning proposed language requiring the lawyer work for a firm large enough to handle multiple trials at once, according to the emails.

“That seems to be directly at odds with the purpose of the agreement, which is to facilitate out of court settlements,” Lefkowitz wrote to Jeffrey Sloman, the first assistant US attorney in South Florida.

Sloman responded a few days later, saying he would remove the requirement “to satisfy your concern.”

Sloman and Villafaña did not respond to requests for comment.

After the special master had picked attorneys Robert “Bob” Josefsberg and one of his partners, Lefkowitz raised concerns in a letter over vetting them more thoroughly. Sloman pointed out that the defense team had seemed comfortable with the selection, and that Alan Dershowitz, another of Epstein’s lawyers, said he went to law school with Josefsberg. He also pointed out that Josefsberg and his partner have “stellar reputations” based on their legal acumen and ethics.

“It’s hard for me to imagine how much more vetting needs to be done,” Sloman wrote to Lefkowitz. “Tomorrow will make one full week since you were formally notified of the selection. I must insist that the vetting process come to an end.”

At the same time, Lefkowitz was fighting to enforce the deal’s privacy clause, which was added by Epstein’s team, and keep the victims and their attorney in the dark about the existence of the deal and its associated charges against Epstein.

“Neither federal agents nor anyone from your Office should contact the identified individuals to inform them of the resolution of the case, including appointment of the attorney representative and the settlement process,” Lefkowitz said to Acosta in an October 2007 email. “Not only would that violate the confidentiality of the Agreement but Mr. Epstein also will have no control over what is communicated to the identified individuals at this most critical stage.”

Goldberg says the moves by Lefkowitz and the defense prevented the victims from putting more pressure on the government to act on Epstein’s criminal matter.

“When you have this kind of cooperation between the government and criminal attorneys conspiring against the victims – that’s unusual and exceptional,” Goldberg said.

Not a Clerk

Lefkowitz eventually agreed to Josefsberg’s selection, but still disagreed on the scope of compensation available to victims under the Federal Civil Remedy for Personal Injuries, the law which grants victims of sexual abuse and exploitation damages.

“We hope to address these issues with Assistant Attorney General Fisher in Washington,” Lefkowitz wrote in a letter faxed to Acosta in December 2007, referring to Alice Fisher, then the head of the DOJ’s criminal division. The letter was also signed by Kirkland lawyer Kenneth Starr, the former independent counsel whose investigation led to former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

It was one of several appeals they would make to Washington in the following months. While it was known that Starr worked for Epstein around that time, the newly released files show how involved he was in shaping the outcome of the non-prosecution agreement.

Weeks before that December 2007 fax to Acosta, Starr had requested a meeting with Fisher, accusing South Florida prosecutors of improperly compelling Epstein to pay civil damages under federal law for a plea on state charges. Fisher later told investigators that she didn’t remember reading the letter, and a Justice Department report said that Fisher did not grant the requested meeting.

By the end of 2007, correspondence about the victims’ representation between the Justice Department and Lefkowitz had grown contentious.

“Your attacks on me and on the victims establish why I wanted to find someone whom I could trust with safeguarding the victims’ best interests in the face of intense pressure from an unlimited number of highly skilled and well paid attorneys,” an assistant US attorney in Acosta’s office wrote to Lefkowitz in December of that year.

Once Josefsberg got to work and began evaluating the claims of his new clients, he also clashed with Lefkowitz, who said in an email that Josefsberg couldn’t sue Epstein on their behalf. Lefkowitz threatened to stop paying Josefsberg’s fees if he didn’t focus on getting the victims to settle for $50,000.

Josefsberg fumed and accused Epstein of breaching the plea deal.

“Perhaps your client thought that he could victimize and intimidate countless underage girls, that he would then agree to provide minimal compensation to them for the damage he inflicted upon them and that I would then simply let them come in and ‘sign the paperwork’ for the absolute minimum recovery,” Josefsberg emailed Lefkowitz in response.

He added that he was not a clerk, just there to document a settlement and get the minimum payout without fully evaluating their claims.

“Settling their cases in a vacuum would amount to malpractice,” he wrote.

Lefkowitz denied breaching the agreement, and reiterated his view that Josefsberg’s work far exceeded the scope of the plea deal.

Cummings of UCLA said the defense lawyers can’t exert influence just because their client is paying, and they can’t help their client interfere with the independent judgement of the victims’ lawyers.

In May 2009, Josefsberg sued Epstein on behalf of Virginia Giuffre, who claimed that she was sexually abused by Epstein and trafficked to prominent men, including Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew. By June, Epstein stopped paying Josefsberg’s fees. He would eventually take Epstein to court for breaching the plea deal, and they reached a settlement for an undisclosed amount.

With assistance from Surya Mattu and Jeff Kao.