The Epstein Defense: How Jay Lefkowitz Tried to Influence Victims’ Legal Representation (3/31/26)

What's up everyone and welcome to another episode of the Epstein Chronicles.

One of the biggest failures when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein and the investigation or

so-called investigation into his crimes is the fact that he ended up getting that non-prosecution

agreement and not only that he received the agreement but how Epstein's legal team seemed

to have led the dance.

They were the ones that were setting the grounds, setting the rules and dictating to the

prosecution where things were going to go.

And for team Epstein, the whole entire goal was to make sure that this was not a federal

case because if this was tried as a federal case, Jeffrey Epstein would have won away for

a very long time.

They wouldn't have been able to control the blast radius, they would have been able to

control the witnesses or the process that would have been sent into motion.

That's why they were so adamant about getting it kicked back down to state because they

knew that that process would be a lot easier for them to manipulate the justice system and

get Jeffrey Epstein favorable terms such as going home every day, sleeping in the stock

aid instead of the regular jail, and having a bunch of other privileges that the rest

of us couldn't even dream of.

And look, we all knew that the fix was in, but now we have the documentation, the emails

and the information that backs it all up.

And what we're left with is a catastrophic failure by the DOJ, by the state of Florida,

and by everybody involved.

So today we have an article from Bloomberg Law and the headline Epstein's lawyer sought

to vet, influence victims attorneys.

This article was authored by Alexia Fernandez Campbell, Tatiana Monet, and Diana Dumbrowski.

Jeffrey Epstein's defense team in an effort led by J. Lefkowitz from Kirkland and Ellis,

pressured officials at the Justice Department about the legal representation of Epstein's

victims, according to files released in January.

Look, Lefkowitz was leading the dance.

And all these clowns over at main justice, Mukesie, Philippe, and the rest of them were

all maneuvering to get themselves a position when they left public office.

And they're all friendly with the people over at Kirkland and Ellis, and how many people

from justice ended up working at Kirkland Ellis.

Well, I'll tell you, a whole lot of them.

Just go ahead and take a look at the roster of lawyers at Kirkland and Ellis.

Experts say the defense team's conduct emits the negotiations for the disgraced financiers

2007 plea deal was an unusual use of influence.

Yeah, no shit it was.

The pressure that they were applying to everybody at main justice to everybody involved was

absurd.

And it should have never occurred.

And it's one of the main reasons in a whole line of reasons why the NPA should be done

away with.

Lefkowitz, along with other lawyers representing Epstein, pressed the victim's 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.

I'm sure it's all just a coincidence with all this coming out.

But if you've been paying attention, I've been telling you about Lefkowitz for years.

And that's because he played a gigantic role in Jeffrey Epstein getting off.

And look, it's one thing to do it the way that Diddy's lawyers did, and it's a whole

last other thing when you do it the way that Jeffrey Epstein's lawyers did.

These lawyers, well, they actually handled business inside of that courtroom.

And they did a great job on cross examination and caused some reasonable doubt in the mind

of the jurors, but that's not what happened with Epstein and his lawyers, right?

Everything was outside of the courtroom, back room dealing deals on the golf course, calling

main justice, pressuring people, and yes, threatening people as well.

So it's one thing to be a hard charging prosecutor, right, or a great defense attorney that's

willing to tow the line.

It's a whole last other thing entirely.

When you're engaging in shit, that in my opinion, at the very least, should get you disbarred.

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.

Officers had identified 34 victims who said Epstein sexually abused them or trafficked

them to other people.

Epstein's lawyers and the Department of Justice attorneys have been highly criticized

for the agreement for years.

Well, they should be.

Imagine cutting a deal like this with a dude like Epstein and thinking there's not going

to be any blowback.

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 the lawyer could do while Epstein would foot

the bill.

When Alex Acosta, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, rejected the

proposal, Lefkowitz indicated he would escalate the issue in Washington.

Of course, main justice made this call.

There was never Alex Acosta.

Bro is a middleman like you would not believe.

Things like the general manager at a Taco Bell, who can give you a couple of free drinks

or something like that if something screws up, but that's about how far his power goes.

You have to call corporate if you want to get things moving, right?

Same thing goes for the Justice Department.

Well, you think some middlemanager is making a decision such as this in one of the biggest

bureaucracies on earth.

Come on now, 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, while at the same time

defending Jeffrey Epstein with his colleagues still at Justice Department.

How does that sound fair, and how does that sound reasonable, and how can anyone be confident

that a real investigation took place when it's rather obvious that the fix was in?

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 Shay 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 bill, the lawyer still works for the client,

not the person who's paying the bills.

Well, in a perfect world.

But then you insert the Epstein lawyers here, and it's a whole last different story, isn't

it?

Epstein eventually pleaded guilty to state charges of procuring a minor for prostitution

in 2008 and served a year in prison, if you want to call it that.

The document shed new light on the approach that Epstein's legal defense team used to

protect the powerful hedge fund mogul for years.

None of this is new.

Maybe new to people that were asleep at the wheel.

But for those of us who have been following along, this is exactly what went down.

And I think that it's pretty interesting that more people are now turning their attention

to main justice.

And for whatever reason, that's always been a key part of this story that people like

to leave out.

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 School of

Law claimed.

That's not something that you should do.

The tactics appeared to have worked.

Leftquids succeeded in pressuring prosecutors to change the language in the plea bargain,

giving Epstein the right to approve or reject the independent lawyer picked by the government

to represent the victims.

Leftquids avoided the government's appointment of protective guardianship for the underage

girls and scrap wording that required the attorney's firm to have experience handling

multiple trials at once.

The fix was in.

And I'm going to keep hammering this point home until the people in power pay attention.

Leftquids, Acosta and Kirkland and Ellis did not respond to requests for comment from

Bloomberg law.

It's ultimately on the prosecution for allowing the concessions coming said bingo 100%.

As scummy as I think that Epstein's lawyers are, they're going to walk the line.

They're going to do what they have to do.

It's up to the prosecution to tell them to get stuffed.

In no way shape or form should Jeffrey Epstein's lawyers be leading the dance.

But that's what's been going on from the very beginning.

Their obligation is to protect the integrity of the process and to make sure that the victims

would have some say.

Not just given to Kirkland's lawyers, he said, victims rights lawyer 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 says, and it's been a big problem.

And I am very happy that Bloomberg Bloomberg law is writing this article.

Because people need to understand what happened here.

And if we want to address the situation in full, we have to start by getting rid of that

NPA.

But to do that, we have to come to terms with the fact that the whole entire thing was rigged.

Their effort to distance the women Epstein abused his girls from pathways to Sue Epstein

began in the fall of 2007.

Epicoids requested the U.S. Attorney's Office remove language from the draft, non-prosecution

deal that would require the government to appoint a guardian, add Lidium 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 Marie Villafana, the assistant

U.S. attorney, handling the federal Epstein investigation.

Epicoids built a reputation representing high-profile clients, including major health care and pharmaceutical

companies throughout his three decade plus tenure at Kirkland, whereas online profile

boasts about Kirkland being a feared litigation firm, all they most certainly are.

And when you're dealing with a big time firm like this with a bunch of ex-prosecutors,

that's what you're going to get.

You're going to get a firm that is not scared to litigate, and that's why people hire

them.

Look, folks, you have different kinds of attorneys, right?

You have, you know, you're running the mill, ambulance chase an attorney.

You have other attorneys that want to plea out of everything, and then you have trial attorneys.

Attorneys that live to fight the battle inside of the courtroom.

And Kirkland Ellis is filled with those kinds of lawyers, and that was on full display

when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein and the case down in Florida.

You may want to consider simply appointing a representative left-goids wrote to her,

in September of 2007, we could agree to someone you considered appropriate.

I'm just not sure the Guardian is the right procedural vehicle.

Later that day, when Epstein signed the non-prosicution agreement, the section outlining legal

representation had changed.

It would be represented not by a guardian ad litium, 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 Falkner University,

Thomas Good Jones, School of Law, described Epstein paying for his victims legal representation,

even having say over who that was as highly unusual.

It's one thing to pay a victim's compensation fund or be ordered to pay restitution, but

such arrangement is beyond pay.

He said, and look, I'm certainly not a trained lawyer, but that's something I brought up

to.

How's that not a conflict of interest?

The guy paying the bills is also the guy that's being charged and being, you know, sued

for X amount of dollars, but sure, let's bring a guy that he's paying in to represent

the people suing him.

Please tell me how that makes sense.

Well, the truth is you can't tell me how it makes sense because it doesn't.

And the whole idea was to steamroll a bunch of poor people into accepting whatever the

government was serving up.

Over the next few weeks, left Kuwait screened and scrutinized lawyers Villafana proposed,

while floating names he preferred, according to the emails.

Some prosecutors decided to appoint an independent party, which they called a special master, to

pick the victim's attorney instead, left Kuwait's push-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 directly at odds with the purpose of the agreement, which is to facilitate

out-of-court settlements, left Kuwait's road to Jeffrey Slomin, the first assistant,

U.S. attorney in South Florida.

Slomin responded a few days later, saying he would remove the requirement to satisfy

your concern.

Slomin and Villafana did not respond to requests for comment, and they're not going to.

None of these scoundrels who were involved are going to respond.

Because they all know how bad they look.

And there is no explanation, no defense, for what occurred here.

After the special master had picked attorneys Robert Bob Joseph Berg, and one of his partners,

left Kuwait's raise concerns in a letter, over vetting them more thoroughly.

Slomin 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 Joseph's

Berg.

He also pointed out that Joseph's Berg and his partner have stellar reputations based

on their legal acumen and ethics.

Well, getting the endorsement from Dershowitz, not exactly a top endorsement, in my opinion.

It's hard for me to imagine how much more vetting needs to be done, Slomin wrote to

left Kuwait's, 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 left Kuwait's was fighting to enforce the deal's privacy clause, which

was added by Epstein's team, and keep the victims and their attorneys in the dark about

the existence of the deal, and its associated charges against Epstein, CVRA violation right

off the bat.

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, left Kuwait's said to Acosta in October of 2007 email.

Not only would that violate the confidentiality of the agreement, but Mr. Epstein would also

have no control over what is communicated to the identified individuals at this most

critical stage.

The fix was in.

Oh, look, only one girl came forward, and she was 17, and she was about to be 18.

To dumb fucking morons, you got to be an absolute idiot to pitch that narrative.

Goldberg says the move by left Kuwait's 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.

And the part that's the most frustrating for me is that the DOJ could end this deal tomorrow.

They could go to court, rip the deal up and say, Epstein did not comply with the deal,

so the deal is now null and void.

And then from there, that means everybody else that was protected by that deal, they're

open to prosecution now.

But of course, Pam Bondy and Crash out Patel, they won't do that.

Well, they got better things to do.

Have you looked at the Dow?

South Kuwait's eventually agreed to Joseph Berg'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, left

Kuwait's wrote in a letter, facts to Acosta, in December of 2007, referring to Alice Fisher,

in the head of DOJ's criminal division, the letter was also signed by Kirkland lawyer

Kenneth Starr, the former independent counsel whose investigation led the former president

Bill Clinton's impeachment.

Jeffrey Epstein's rising star.

Good old Ken Starr wasn't he also in charge over at Baylor when they had their issues

with sexual assault?

Oh, that's right, he was, huh?

Good old Ken Starr, Mr. Morality himself.

This before that December 2007, facts to Acosta star 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-stay charges.

Fisher later told investigators she didn't remember reading the letter and the Justice Department

report said that Fisher did not grant the requested meeting.

Sure she didn't.

Maybe not officially, but backdoored, channeled?

Probably.

Now look, I certainly don't have the proof to back that up, but I'm going on what's logical,

right?

Do we really think that these people only had meetings that were on the books?

By the end of 2007, correspondence about the victim's representation between the Justice

Department and left quids had grown contentious.

Your attacks on me and on the victims established why I wanted to find someone whom I could

trust with safeguarding the victim's best interest in the face of intense pressure from

an unlimited number of highly skilled and well-paid attorneys and assisting U.S. attorney

in Acosta's office row to left quids in December of that year.

Once Joseph's Bergs got to work and began evaluating the claims of his new clients,

he had also clashed with left quids who said in an email that Joseph's Bergs couldn't

sue Epstein on their behalf.

Rock quids threatened to stop paying Joseph Bergs fees if he didn't focus on getting

the victims to settle for $50,000.

This is a mafia run operation basically.

Who does left quids think he is?

Tom Hagen, dealing with a band leader?

Like Buddy, what do you think you're doing here?

Joseph Bergs 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 simply let them come in and sign the paperwork for the absolute

minimum recovery, Joseph Bergs email left quids 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.

No doubt about it, and thankfully Joseph Bergs pushed back.

Imagine being a trained attorney, you know, an attorney of no to as pride, and then just

play him ball with those scumbags for some kind of financial gain.

And the truth is there's a lot of lawyers out there that would have no problem doing it.

Left quids denied breaching the agreement and reiterated his view that Joseph Bergs

work far exceeded the scope of the plea deal.

Cummings of UCLA said the defense lawyer can exert influence just because their client

is paying, and they can't help their client interfere with the independent judgment of

the victim's lawyer.

In May of 2009, Joseph Bergs sued Epstein on behalf of Virginia Roberts, who claimed

that she was sexually abused by Epstein and trafficked prominent men, including Andrew

Mountbatten, Windsor, the former Prince Andrew, by June Epstein stopped paying Joseph Bergs

fees.

He would eventually take Epstein to court for breaching the plea deal, and they reached

the settlement for an undisclosed amount.

Settlement is settlement that everybody gets a settlement, and that's how people like

Epstein continue to get away with their bullshit.

They just pay people off time and time again, and the sad truth is that's how our system

is set up.

The whole entire idea is so that the men of all ways can continue to prey on the children

of never, and if they happen to get caught or outed, well, what's the next move, I'll

pay a settlement, and this is the story time and time again.

They get to pay their way out of trouble, nobody goes to prison, and they just move on

to the next victim, and the sad truth is, for people like this, the next victim is never

far away.

Alright folks, that's going to do it for this one.

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