⚠ Nothing on this page is a finding of wrongdoing
He was a defence lawyer, and defending a client is a lawyer’s function. No document read for this page finds that he did anything improper. Victims’ counsel asked the government, in a formal request for admission, whether it held information about improper influence attempted on Epstein’s behalf by him. The government’s filed answer was “Denied.” That answer, and the allegation, are set out together below.
| Who | A former United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, later a partner in the Miami firm Lewis Tein, PL, acting for Jeffrey Epstein1 |
| ⭐ The act | He e-mailed the line prosecutor asking to meet about the case, one day after she told him Epstein was a target of her investigation. Her own subject line was “Your phone calls”, plural2 |
| ⭐ And the record that is not the advocacy | Epstein’s office wired money to his firm repeatedly, on instructions signed in Epstein’s office, from October 2006 to July 2008. Two are verified at the image: $150,000 on 16 July 2007 and $99,362.91 instructed on 27 November 20073 |
| The shape of that series | The earliest payment visible in the release precedes his first message to the prosecutor by 25 days, and payments continue for roughly a year past the non-prosecution agreement. ⚠ Whether the series begins there cannot be shown: that sheet is page 3 of 104 |
| The allegation | A CVRA request for admission of 1 December 2011 asked the government to admit it held information on improper influence attempted on Epstein’s behalf by him5 |
| The answer | ”18. (a) Denied.” The United States’ filed response of, 19 July 20135 |
| ⚠ And a draft in the same release | An unsigned, undated internal draft answer says a denial “is problematic” because the drafter had “never seen all of the emails”. It is not the government’s position and did not survive into the filed answer5 |
| ⚠ What he said about it | Nothing that the documents read for this page record. The government’s denial is a statement about the government’s own holdings. It is not his answer and this page does not let it stand in for one5 |
Guy Lewis had been the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. By late 2006 he was in private practice and acting for Jeffrey Epstein, whose federal investigation that same office was conducting.
This page is built on two things: what he wrote to the prosecutor handling the case, and the money that moved from Epstein’s office to his firm while he did it.
The e-mail, and what preceded it by one day
On 30 October 2006 at 12:30 p.m., the Assistant U.S. Attorney handling the Epstein investigation wrote to him under the subject line “Your phone calls”, her word, plural:
Regarding Mr. Epstein, there isn’t much to tell. The investigation is continuing. As I told Mr. Lefcourt, Mr. Epstein is a target of the investigation. … Can you confirm whether you are the “lead” attorney for Mr. Epstein?
At 2:43 p.m. the same day he replied, over his own name:
thanks so much for the email. I hear great things about your work, and am so glad you are doing well. I’m anxious to hear about your move to WPB.
I was hoping to stop in and see you briefly about the case. I promise to try to not waste your time. There may be a couple of things that I think will be important to you as you conduct your inquiry. Maybe 15 or 20 minutes if you could spare it in the next few weeks.
I’m not sure if there is a “lead” in that there are a number of attorneys involved. Feel free to call me on anything however. I try to communicate with the other attorneys regularly.
Again, thanks for your time. And good luck with your trial.
Guy
The office logged both messages as exhibits in its own investigation timeline, a document marked Privileged Confidential: “10/30/2006 | Villafaña | Guy Lewis | Email re representation of Jeffrey Epstein | Exhibit 10”.6
And the office’s own account of the approach, in a letter from the United States Attorney to Epstein’s counsel, puts it this way:
At the end of 2006, Guy Lewis contacted AUSA A. Marie Villafaña when he learned that she was handling the federal investigation of Mr. Epstein. He asked to meet with her and she stated that she believed such a meeting would be premature.
The money
Epstein’s office wired money to Lewis Tein, PL, repeatedly, and the instruction and the debit both survive.
A memorandum on Epstein’s own letterhead, dated 27 November 2007 and signed on the rule by his bookkeeper, instructs his bank:
Please wire Ninety Nine Thousand Three Hundred Sixty Two Dollars 91/100 ($99,362.91) … For credit to: Lewis Tein, PL
And a JPMorgan statement for Epstein’s checking account records, on 16 July 2007:
Jul 16 | Fedwire Debit / VIA: GREAT FLORIDA BANK / A/C: LEWIS TEIN PL | $150,000.00
Instruction and execution, in two separately produced documents.3
The series runs from October 2006 to July 2008. ⚠ This page prints no total and no count. Only two of the instruments have been read at the image; the rest are legible in the searchable text only, the same instruments recur across two productions, and a sum over a set of unknown completeness is not a total.3
⚠ The payee is the firm, not the man. Every instrument names Lewis Tein, PL. The same statement pages carry a debit to another Epstein lawyer’s firm account two lines away.3
What the shape of the series shows, and it is the page’s one inference: the earliest payment this desk can see precedes his first message to the prosecutor by twenty-five days, and the payments continue for about a year after the non-prosecution agreement was signed.
⚠⚠ CORRECTION, 2026-09-19. An earlier version of this sentence read “the payments begin in the same month he first wrote to the prosecutor”. That was true and it concealed the order. The earliest wire this desk can see is $100,000 to LEWIS TEIN PL on 5 October 2006; his message to the Assistant U.S. Attorney is of 30 October 2006, 2:43 p.m. The money came first. “The same month” let a reader hear the opposite and this page had no business leaving that open.4
⚠ And “begin” has been dropped, because it cannot be shown. The sheet carrying the 5 October wire is marked “Page 3 of 10” and the other nine pages are not in the release. An earlier payment could sit on any of them. This page can say what the earliest visible payment is; it cannot say the series starts there, and the difference is the whole of the inference.
The allegation, the answer, and the doubt
On 1 December 2011, counsel for two Epstein victims served a request for admission asking the government to admit that it
possesses, or has knowledge or information (including telephone logs or photographs or emails) reflecting improper communication or influence made or attempted with the Government, on Jeffrey Epstein’s behalf by: (a) Guy Lewis (b) LilyAnn Sanchez
⚠ That is a question put by a party. It is not a finding, and it is not even an assertion of fact: it asks the government to admit that it possesses information.5
On 19 July 2013 the United States answered: “18. (a) Denied. (b) Denied.”5
And the release also contains an unsigned, undated internal draft in which, in place of an answer to that request, the drafter wrote:
[I don’t know how to answer this. “improper communication or influence” is so vague and potentially broad that a denial is problematic. I also have never seen all of the emails between Guy and Lilly Ann and Alex, ▮▮▮▮ (and any others in DC).]
⚠ That note is not the government’s position. None of the draft’s bracketed notes survives into the filed answer, and the filed answer supplies an answer wherever the draft supplies none. ⚠ The four barred initials are this page’s own substitution, not a producer’s redaction. Four given names of office staff are withheld here by this desk.5
⚠⚠ And no response from him is recorded on any document read for this page. The government’s denial is a statement about the government’s own holdings. It is not his answer, and this page does not present it as one.5
What this page does not say
- ⚠ He did not sign the victim notification. Four copies were opened and every date, signature and initial line is blank. His name appears in print only.7
- ⚠ His tenure dates are not stated. The Justice Department’s own report on the matter would supply them, but every renderable copy of that report in this release bars his surname, and the copies that print it cannot be opened at all. Rather than import dates from outside the record, this page leaves them out.8
- ⚠ A claim that he was dismissed from the U.S. Attorney’s office appears in the release as hearsay within hearsay in a third party’s grievance memorandum. It is not published here.
- ⚠ A reported approach to a senior Justice Department official is, on the documents read, at best a credible allegation in that same memorandum; the approaches this release documents are Epstein’s own and his other counsel’s. Not published as his.9
- ⚠ Epstein’s own manuscript account of hiring him, including a monthly retainer figure, exists in an unsent draft. It has not been read at the image and is not quoted.9
A conflict question was raised, and it was about somebody else
The Justice Department’s review records that the Deputy Criminal Chief supervising the Epstein case volunteered a recusal question about his own friendship with Lewis and with Lewis’s law partner. The office’s Professional Responsibility Officer answered that these were not “covered” relationships, and the First Assistant authorised him to continue supervising the case.
The inquiry was about the prosecutor’s position, not about Lewis’s.8
Related
- Lilly Ann Sanchez, named in the same request for admission
- A. Marie Villafaña, the prosecutor he wrote to
- Jack Goldberger and Martin Weinberg, also acting for Epstein and also paid through his office
- Harry Beller, who signed the wire instruction
- The CVRA requests for admission
- Villafaña’s written response to OPR
- The CVRA litigation
- The USAO’s Epstein investigation timeline
Notes
Footnotes
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Two renderable documents carry both his former offices and his name in the clear. The primary instrument: a letter on U.S. Department of Justice letterhead, United States Attorney, Southern District of Florida, by facsimile to Kenneth W. Starr of Kirkland & Ellis, Re: Jeffrey Epstein, read at the image. EFTA00176157 p.9. ⚠⚠ RUN LENGTH AND HOMOGENEITY: 21 pages and NOT homogeneous, p.1 is a cover slip, pp.2-8 are one seven-page letter, pp.9-14 are a different six-page letter, and pp.15-21 repeat the first. ⚠ The copy at p.9 is a marked-up file copy: its date line is struck through in pink ink and the top margin carries a pink manuscript annotation. Cite it as a file copy, not as the letter as sent; the clean date prints as a running head on pp.10-14. A first-person narrative in the First Assistant’s voice carries the same account at EFTA00224728 p.3, describing him as “former SDFL U.S. Attorney and EOUSA Executive Director”. ⚠ Tenure dates are deliberately omitted; see 8. ↩ ↩2
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Exhibit 10 to the line prosecutor’s written response to the Office of Professional Responsibility. EFTA00223891 p.1, run length 5 pages, all one exhibit. His message of 30 October 2006, 2:43 PM, is quoted from its opening; the prosecutor’s message of the same day, 12:30 PM, subject “Your phone calls”, is quoted beneath it on the same sheet. ⚠ A solid opaque bar covers her name and her professional contact lines on this copy, sharp-edged, full ink, not a wash. Nothing under it is supplied. ⚠ No contact value is reproduced from this document or its siblings. The quotation of his message begins after the barred salutation, which is why it opens mid-greeting. ↩ ↩2
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The instruction: memorandum on Jeffrey E. Epstein letterhead, 27 November 2007, from his bookkeeper to his bank, over a handwritten signature on the rule, read at the image at 300 dpi. EFTA01579267 p.1. ⚠ The source account number, the beneficiary account number, the office address and the telephone and fax block are all on that sheet and none is reproduced here. The execution: JPMorgan Private Bank statement for Epstein’s checking account, period 30 June to 31 July 2007, page 6 of 11, read at the image at 300 dpi: “Jul 16 | Fedwire Debit … A/C: LEWIS TEIN PL | $150,000.00”. EFTA01482853 p.1. ⚠⚠ NO TOTAL AND NO COUNT IS PRINTED, deliberately. The firm phrase returns 323 pages across 183 documents, but the same instruments recur across two productions, at least four wire memoranda appear twice, and the statement pages are duplicated between productions, so a naive count double-counts. Only the two instruments above were read at the image; the remainder are legible in the searchable text only and are not image-verified. The series’ start and end months are read from that text layer and are offered as the shape of the series, not as an audited range. ⚠ The payee on every instrument is the firm, Lewis Tein, PL, not the man, and the page says so; the same statement pages carry a debit to another Epstein lawyer’s firm account two lines away. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4
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The earliest visible payment. JPMorgan Private Bank statement for Jeffrey E. Epstein’s Premier Checking account, period 30 September to 31 October 2006, EFTA01482768 p.1, read at the image at 400 dpi. The row reads Oct 05 / Fedwire Debit / $100,000.00 / VIA: GREAT FLORIDA BANK / A/C: LEWIS TEIN PL. ⚠ The payee is the firm, as everywhere else in this series. ⚠ The account numbers on that sheet, and the beneficiary address lines on the neighbouring wires, are not reproduced here. ⚠⚠ THE SHEET IS AN ISOLATED INTERIOR PAGE: its own header reads “Page 3 of 10” and the release contains this page alone, which is why this page states an earliest visible payment and refuses to call it the first. ⚠⚠ DO NOT TAKE A FIGURE FROM THE
EFTA015267xx/EFTA015277xxTWIN OF THIS PRODUCTION: a 400 dpi render of EFTA01526797 p.5 is not an image of a document at all but a re-render of its own OCR text layer, with the amounts detached into a column and$100,000.00appearing three times. Use theEFTA014828xxfamily. The date ordering, and that trap, were established by the pre-verification pass commissioned for a Lewis Tein page, 2026-09-19. ↩ ↩2 -
The allegation: “JANE DOE #1 AND JANE DOE #2’S FIRST REQUEST FOR ADMISSIONS TO THE GOVERNMENT”, No. 08-80736-Civ-Marra/Johnson, dated 1 December 2011, 8 pages, homogeneous, read at the image at 300 dpi. EFTA01657803 p.5. The answer: the United States’ filed response, Entered on FLSD Docket 07/19/2013, read at the image at 400 dpi: “18. (a) Denied. (b) Denied.” EFTA01081186 p.9. Independently confirmed on a second filed copy which prints request and answer interleaved, EFTA00208608 p.59; both copies opened. The draft: an undated and unsigned five-page draft captioned “RESPONDENT’S ANSWERS TO PETITIONERS’ FIRST REQUESTS FOR ADMISSIONS”, carrying working notes in square brackets, read at the image at 400 dpi. EFTA00205324 p.5. ⚠ The
▮▮▮▮in the quotation is this page’s own substitution and NOT a producer’s redaction. Four given names of office staff are withheld here by this desk, following the desk’s own precedent on the same sentence. ⚠ That page also establishes that none of the twelve bracketed notes survives into the filed answer. ⚠⚠ No statement by him about this request, the denial or the draft appears on any document read for this page. That is a fact about the documents read, not about the world. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 -
“EPSTEIN INVESTIGATION TIMELINE”, marked Privileged Confidential and Contains 6(e) Material. EFTA00224943 p.2 of 51. It logs two messages from him to the prosecutor, on 30 and 31 October 2006, as Exhibit 10. See the page on that document. ↩
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⚠ REFUTED. Four copies of the victim notification were opened at the image, EFTA00223499 pp.3, 4 and 8 (that identifier holds two copies of the same form), EFTA00192771 p.14 and EFTA00220854 p.2, and every date line, signature line and initial line is blank on all of them. His name appears in print only. A printed name is not a signature, and nothing on this page says he signed or witnessed that document. ↩
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The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility report records the recusal inquiry described above, and would also supply his tenure dates. ⚠⚠ It cannot be cited here for either. On the copy this desk can render, his surname is covered by solid opaque bars, verified at the image at 300 dpi on EFTA02809635 p.49, four separate points on one page, ink and not a wash. ⚠ There is therefore no image-verifiable pin on this wiki for the report’s sentences about him, and this page quotes none of them and states no tenure date. The recusal account above is given from the report’s substance, without quotation and without a pin to any passage naming him. ⚠ Which copies of this report redact what is recorded in the desk’s internal file and appears nowhere on this wiki. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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Three things in the release are deliberately not published. (1) A claim that he was dismissed from the U.S. Attorney’s office appears as hearsay within hearsay in a third party’s grievance memorandum and is not carried. (2) A reported approach by him to a senior Justice Department official appears in the same memorandum at best as a credible allegation; the approaches this release actually documents were made by Epstein and by other counsel, and this page does not attribute them to him. (3) Epstein’s own unsent manuscript describes hiring him and names a monthly retainer figure. ⚠ It has not been read at the image, it is Epstein’s own draft writing about himself, and it is not quoted here. ↩ ↩2