Epstein Data Wiki

Julie K. Brown

Properties2
tagsperson, journalist, miami-herald, media, unsealing
aliasesJulie Brown, Julie Knipe Brown, Brown, Julie, JKB

17 min read

OccupationInvestigative reporter, Miami Herald1
Known for”Perversion of Justice,” published November 28, 20182
Court roleIntervenor, Giuffre v. Maxwell, 15-cv-7433 (S.D.N.Y.) (moved to intervene April 6, 2018; granted August 27, 2018); named appellant in Brown v. Maxwell, 929 F.3d 41 (2d Cir. 2019)34
CounselHolland & Knight LLP (Sanford L. Bohrer, Christine N. Walz)5
BookPerversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story, Dey Street Books, July 20, 20216

Julie Knipe Brown is an American investigative reporter at the Miami Herald.1 Her series “Perversion of Justice,” published on November 28, 2018, examined the state and federal investigations of Jeffrey Epstein in Palm Beach and the 2007–2008 federal non-prosecution agreement that ended them.2 The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility opened its investigation of that agreement after a United States senator wrote to it citing the Herald’s report, and its 2020 report recorded that the reporting “led to public outrage and media scrutiny of the government’s actions.”78 Brown and the Miami Herald Media Company were also parties in their own right in the Epstein litigation: they intervened in Giuffre v. Maxwell in 2018 to seek the unsealing of the sealed record, and the resulting Second Circuit decision, which ordered the summary judgment materials unsealed, is reported as Brown v. Maxwell.34

”Perversion of Justice”

The Office of Professional Responsibility’s November 2020 report describes the series as “an extensive investigative report about state and federal criminal investigations initiated more than 12 years earlier into allegations that Epstein had coerced girls into engaging in sexual activity with him at his Palm Beach estate,” and summarises its findings: that Alexander Acosta had entered into an “extraordinary” agreement permitting Epstein to avoid federal prosecution by pleading guilty in state court, that the government had also immunised co-conspirators, and that it had concealed the agreement’s terms from Epstein’s victims.2 The report notes that the reporting drew on interviews with eight victims and on publicly available documents.2 In its own February 2019 follow-up the Herald described “Perversion of Justice” as a three-part series.9

A sealed 2019 opinion of Chief Judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern District of New York cited the lead article in a footnote setting out the background to the case and observed that the series “garnered attention from the media and from Congress and has apparently prompted an investigation by the Department of Justice.”10

Institutional consequences

Office of Professional Responsibility. OPR’s report states that after the Herald published on November 28, 2018, Senator Ben Sasse, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts, sent a December 3, 2018 letter to OPR citing the report and asking it to “open an investigation into the instances identified in this reporting of possible misconduct by Department of Justice attorneys.” On February 6, 2019 the Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs advised Sasse that OPR had opened an investigation and would review the decision to resolve the federal investigation through the agreement.7 The same day the Herald published Brown’s report of the opening of the investigation, and a Southern District of New York email circulated the article internally under the headline “Justice Department opens probe into Jeffrey Epstein plea deal.”9

Deutsche Bank. On July 8, 2019 a Deutsche Bank executive asked a colleague in the bank’s wealth management arm, “What was the catalyst for our decision last year to exit?” She replied the same evening with a link to Brown’s Miami Herald articles and a pasted summary of the series.11

Federal prosecutors. Southern District of New York staff circulated coverage of her reporting internally: in June 2019 the press office shared a WNYC episode about her reporting; on December 11, 2019 a press officer wrote, “FWIW/FYI — Julie Brown is hearing that we’re unsealing four indictments against co-conspirators next week”; and in July 2021 the office’s chief public information officer forwarded a New York Times opinion piece about her.121314 On August 6, 2019 a commercial alerting service pushed one of her tweets, reporting that Florida’s governor had ordered a state criminal inquiry into the Palm Beach Sheriff’s and former State Attorney’s handling of the case, to an FBI recipient as an “urgent update.”15

Intervention in the Maxwell litigation

Motion to intervene, 2018. Virginia Giuffre’s defamation suit against Ghislaine Maxwell settled in May 2017 with most of its record under seal.16 On April 6, 2018 the Miami Herald Media Company and Brown moved under Rule 24 to intervene in the case, No. 15-cv-7433 (S.D.N.Y.), and to unseal every sealed or redacted docket entry, arguing that the documents were “germane to the Miami Herald’s ongoing coverage” and had been sealed under an improvidently granted protective order.3 They were represented by Holland & Knight LLP.5 On August 27, 2018 Judge Robert W. Sweet granted the motion to intervene and denied the motion to unseal, as to both the discovery materials and the summary judgment materials, reasoning that unsealing would promote scandal arising from unproven, potentially libelous allegations of sexual abuse and would defeat the privacy interests the parties and non-parties had relied on in reaching a confidential settlement.171819

Brown v. Maxwell, 2019. Brown and the Herald appealed, as did the intervenors Alan Dershowitz and Michael Cernovich; the appeals were heard in tandem on March 6, 2019 and decided on July 3, 2019 in an opinion by Judge José A. Cabranes reported as Brown v. Maxwell, 929 F.3d 41.4 The court vacated the district court’s orders, ordered the summary judgment record unsealed subject to minimal redactions, and remanded for individualised review of the remaining materials; it also cautioned that court files can “become a vehicle for improper purposes” and described the tools available to district courts to prevent that.2021 Judge Rosemary Pooler dissented in part.4 Counsel in an unrelated Southern District of New York prosecution, United States v. Gatto, circulated the decision on August 2, 2019 to ask whether the other parties objected to its being filed with the court.22

The 2020 appeal. On remand the case was reassigned to Judge Loretta A. Preska, who conducted the document-by-document review.23 On June 24, 2020 Brown and the Herald filed a response to Maxwell’s objections to unsealing, arguing that her filing mischaracterised Brown v. Maxwell and that the party seeking to keep documents sealed bears a heavy burden.24 Maxwell appealed Preska’s July 23, 2020 unsealing order; on September 11, 2020 the Second Circuit ordered the United States to file an amicus letter brief on Maxwell’s arguments and on her motion to consolidate the appeal with her criminal case, and adjourned the scheduled hearing.25 Argument was calendared for October 13, 2020 before Judges Cabranes, Pooler and Raggi.26 On October 19, 2020 the panel affirmed the unsealing order, denied the motion to consolidate, and held that the district court had correctly treated the deposition materials as judicial documents.27

The criminal case, 2022. On January 21, 2022 Brown and the Herald, again through Holland & Knight, asked Judge Alison J. Nathan for leave to intervene in United States v. Maxwell, No. 20-cr-330, to oppose Maxwell’s filing of her motion for a new trial entirely under seal, arguing that the motion was a judicial document and that the subject matter was already public.28

Requests for comment

The release preserves several exchanges in which Brown sought comment from government offices, along with a screenshot and a letter addressed partly to her.

On February 25, 2019 she emailed a Southern District of Florida attorney asking for comment on a story about a different prosecution from that district, writing that legal experts she had consulted said the two cases showed a pattern, and offering to speak off the record.29 The recipient forwarded it the same evening with the note, “I have not, nor do I plan to, engage in an off the record conversation (nor do I plan to comment),” and it was forwarded again on February 26.29

On July 11, 2019, five days after Epstein’s arrest, she pressed the Southern District of New York press office after it declined to say how many victims had contacted the office, asking specifically for a statement on whether the office had received a response from victims and whether that response was good, and noting that she too was hearing from victims reluctant to approach the office given how the women in Florida had been treated. She asked that the email be shared with U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman or the lead prosecutors.30 The press officer forwarded it internally, writing that the office understood her point but was unsure whether commenting on the volume of calls it received was “a road we want to go down.”30

A third item is a screenshot, undated and carrying no header, of a message signed “Julie K. Brown, Investigative Reporter, The Miami Herald,” giving a lawyer notice that a story about Epstein was scheduled to run, saying that it would refer to the lawyer’s client, and asking to speak to the client before publication. The document identifies neither the recipient nor the client, and the substance of what the message says about the client is not reproduced here.31

An anonymous letter posted in November 2021 was addressed both to federal prosecutors and to Brown at the Herald, urging further reporting on the Virgin Islands. It is an unsolicited submission from a member of the public, and its assertions are not relied on here.32

Epstein’s response to the reporting

Epstein and his advisers discussed how to answer the series. On February 21, 2019 he wrote to Matthew Hiltzik, “matt, julie brown just won an award. so she is feeling empowered. do we ask for a meeting with her her editors or leave it.” Hiltzik replied that evening: “I would leave it No way she would have any interest in revisiting or undermining her own conclusions…”33

On March 6, 2019 Epstein wrote to his lawyer Kathy Ruemmler: “I assume you will tell me NFW But id love to sit down with julie brown. Tell her lets try to find a positive that comes out of this mess. Help for women. Have her ask me questions and I take responsibility, no excuses. I was careless etc. Point out the exaggerated nature of some claims. , non judgmental, but in order to correct the record.” Ruemmler replied seven minutes later, “How is that consistent with advice from the PR guy?”3435 He raised the idea again on April 6, 2019 in an exchange with Michael Wolff about whether to make a public act of contrition, writing “Allowing julie brown to interview me?”; Wolff answered, “In our hypothetical documentary we interview her.”36 No such interview appears in the documents cited on this page.

His lawyers circulated her work to him: on March 5, 2019 the attorney Lilly Sanchez sent him the text of her story on the Miami U.S. Attorney’s Office recusing itself from the victims’ rights case.37

Epstein’s lawyer Martin Weinberg told two Washington Post reporters, Kimberly Kindy and Beth Reinhard, in a March 2019 exchange he marked off the record, that the defence “did not respond at all to her articles although the articles had a number of inaccuracies.” The one inaccuracy the exchange actually addresses is the age, in the count of conviction, of the woman Brown’s reporting had given as 14; Weinberg argued, still off the record, that the registrable offense concerned a woman who was 17, and pointed the reporters to the indictment and to the New York SORA transcript in support. The reporters wrote in the same thread that “no correction has run, which is odd for such a high-profile story,” a line that in context registers the discrepancy as unresolved rather than siding with either figure.38 Neither this exchange nor any other document cited on this page settles which age is correct, and no response from Brown or the Herald to Weinberg’s characterisation of her reporting appears in the documents cited here.

Her book was among the publications Maxwell’s defence listed in October 2021 in support of a motion for individual sequestered voir dire, as evidence of the volume of pretrial publicity.39

Coverage

  • Julie K. Brown, “Perversion of Justice,” Miami Herald, November 28, 2018.40
  • Julie K. Brown et al., “Lawmakers issue call for investigation of serial sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein’s plea deal,” Miami Herald, December 6, 2018.8
  • Julie K. Brown, “Justice Department opens probe into Jeffrey Epstein plea deal,” Miami Herald, February 6, 2019.9
  • “Julie Brown’s Fight to Expose Epstein’s Crimes — and Earn a Living,” Opinion, The New York Times, July 17, 2021.14
  • Further reading: Julie K. Brown, Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story (Dey Street Books, 2021).6

Footnotes

  1. Wikipedia, “Julie K. Brown.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_K._Brown ↩ ↩2

  2. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Professional Responsibility, “Executive Summary of Report: Investigation into the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida’s Resolution of Its 2006-2008 Federal Criminal Investigation of Jeffrey Epstein,” November 2020, printed p. iii and n.3. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00023059 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. Memorandum of law in support of the motion of Julie Brown and Miami Herald Media Company to intervene and unseal, Giuffre v. Maxwell, 15-cv-7433-RWS, Dkt. 936, filed April 6, 2018. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00805407 pp. 6, 21. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Brown v. Maxwell, 2019 WL 2814839, — F.3d — (2d Cir. July 3, 2019), Nos. 18-2868-cv et al.; argued March 6, 2019; opinion by Cabranes, Circuit Judge; Pooler, Circuit Judge, dissenting in part. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00085098 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  5. Giuffre v. Maxwell, 2018 WL 4062649, attorneys and law firms: “Counsel for Interveners Julie Brown & Miami Herald Media Company: HOLLAND & KNIGHT LLP … By: Christine N. Walz, Esq., Sanford L. Bohrer, Esq.” https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00020541 ↩ ↩2

  6. Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story, Dey Street Books, published July 20, 2021. Open Library, https://openlibrary.org/works/OL21919255W ↩ ↩2

  7. OPR Executive Summary, “The Initiation and Scope of OPR’s Investigation,” printed pp. v–vi. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00023059 ↩ ↩2

  8. OPR Executive Summary, printed p. iv and n.4. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00023059 ↩ ↩2

  9. Miami Herald article of Feb 6, 2019, excerpted (four paragraphs, ending at the quotation from Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd) in a U.S. Attorney’s Office (S.D.N.Y.) email of the same date, 22:09 UTC. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00015719 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  10. In re Grand Jury Subpoena, 19 Misc. 149 (CM), sealed memorandum decision and order (S.D.N.Y.), printed p. 13 n.4. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01263246 ↩

  11. Deutsche Bank internal email thread, July 8, 2019. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01356804 ↩

  12. U.S. Attorney’s Office (S.D.N.Y.) email of June 18, 2019 circulating a WNYC “Here’s the Thing” episode about her reporting. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00030499 ↩

  13. U.S. Attorney’s Office (S.D.N.Y.) public affairs email, December 11, 2019. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00018946 ↩

  14. Email of July 18, 2021 from the S.D.N.Y. chief public information officer forwarding the New York Times opinion piece of July 17, 2021. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00019648 ↩ ↩2

  15. Commercial alerting-service “urgent update” emailed to an FBI address, August 6, 2019, relaying a tweet by Brown timestamped 2:00 pm EDT. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01659233 ↩

  16. The case is captioned Virginia L. Giuffre v. Ghislaine Maxwell, 15-cv-07433-RWS. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00017074 The opinion on the intervention motion records the action as running “from its inception in September 2015 to its settlement in May 2017.” https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00020541 ↩

  17. Giuffre v. Maxwell, 2018 WL 4062649 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 27, 2018) (Sweet, J.), synopsis: “Motion to intervene granted; motion to unseal denied.” https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00020541 ↩

  18. Giuffre v. Maxwell, 2018 WL 4062649, opinion of Sweet, D.J.: “the motion of Brown and the Miami Herald to intervene is granted.” https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00020541 ↩

  19. Giuffre v. Maxwell, 2018 WL 4062649, printed p. 29: “The unsealing of the Summary Judgment Judicial Documents would both promote scandal arising out of unproven potentially libelous statements—particularly in light of the allegations relating to the sexual abuse of minors by public figures, and defeat the compelling privacy interests of the parties and non-parties who relied on the Protective Order.” https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00020541 ↩

  20. Brown v. Maxwell, conclusion: “we VACATE the orders of the District Court entered on November 2, 2016, May 3, 2017, and August 27, 2018, ORDER the unsealing of the summary judgment record as described herein, and REMAND the cause to the District Court for particularized review of the remaining materials.” https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00085098 ↩

  21. Brown v. Maxwell, discussion: the court warned that without vigilance court files might “become a vehicle for improper purposes” and set out the tools available to district courts. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00085098 ↩

  22. Counsel in an unrelated S.D.N.Y. prosecution circulated the decision on August 2, 2019, asking the other parties whether they objected to its being filed with the court. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00016130 ↩

  23. Letter of Maxwell’s counsel to Judge Alison J. Nathan, August 17, 2020, reciting the procedural history of the unsealing litigation. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00018749 p. 3. ↩

  24. “Intervenors’ Julie Brown and Miami Herald Media Co.’s Response to Maxwell’s Objections to Unsealing,” filed June 24, 2020. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00017074 ↩

  25. Second Circuit order, No. 20-2413, September 11, 2020. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00028060 ↩

  26. Second Circuit argument calendar, Courtroom 1703, Tuesday, October 13, 2020; panel Cabranes, Pooler, Raggi. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00032483 ↩

  27. Second Circuit summary order, No. 20-2413-cv, October 19, 2020, affirming the July 23, 2020 order of the district court (Preska, J.) and denying the motion to consolidate with No. 20-3061-cr. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00018289 ↩

  28. Holland & Knight letter for the Miami Herald and Julie Brown to Judge Alison J. Nathan dated January 21, 2022 and docketed January 24, 2022 as Dkt. 581, United States v. Maxwell, No. 1:20-cr-00330. https://epstein-data.com/DOJ-OGR-00008824 ↩

  29. Brown email of February 25, 2019, 6:32 pm EST, forwarded within the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida the same evening and again on February 26, 2019, 3:18 am EST. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01657871 ↩ ↩2

  30. Brown email of July 11, 2019, 4:04 pm, and the internal forward of the same day, 20:08 UTC. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00076119 ↩ ↩2

  31. Screenshot of a message signed by Brown, produced without header or addressee. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01600256 ↩

  32. Anonymous letter postmarked in November 2021, addressed to counsel and, at its final page, to Brown at the Miami Herald. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01682059 ↩

  33. Epstein to Matthew Hiltzik, February 21, 2019, 10:30 am, and Hiltzik’s reply the same day at 9:27 pm. Both messages carry quoted-printable transfer artifacts in the image itself. In the text quoted here: Epstein’s message reads “=do we ask for a meeting,” restored to “do”; it also contains the token ”&=bsp;” between “award.” and “so she is feeling empowered,” an HTML non-breaking-space artifact, omitted from the quotation. Hiltzik’s reply reads “r=visiting,” restored to “revisiting.” The quotation stops after “conclusions,” marked with an ellipsis because the reply continues; the image has no full stop after “I would leave it,” and none is added here. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02634768 ↩

  34. Epstein to Kathy Ruemmler, March 6, 2019, 4:59 am. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02632221 The image carries five quoted-printable transfer artifacts, all restored in the quotation: “d=wn” (“down”), “come=” (“comes”), “t=ke” (“take”), “Poi=t” (“Point”), and “orde=” (“order”); the stray punctuation before “non judgmental” is unaltered. All five restorations are safe: Ruemmler’s reply quotes the message back in full, and at each of these five points her copy prints the word intact, while breaking instead at other points this copy does not. ↩

  35. Ruemmler to Epstein, March 6, 2019, 5:06 am. The image carries a quoted-printable transfer artifact (“How=is”), restored to “How is” in the quotation. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02632177 ↩

  36. Epstein to Michael Wolff, April 6, 2019, 9:02 am, and Wolff’s reply at 2:17 pm, within a longer thread begun at 5:31 am. The image carries a quoted-printable transfer artifact (“Al=owing”), restored to “Allowing” in the quotation. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02634215 ↩

  37. Lilly Sanchez to Epstein, March 5, 2019, subject “Herald,” reproducing the Miami Herald story on the recusal of the Miami U.S. Attorney’s Office. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01031374 ↩

  38. Email thread of March 9–11, 2019 between Martin G. Weinberg and the reporters identified in the thread as Kindy, Kimberly, and Reinhard, Beth, forwarded by Weinberg to Epstein on March 11, 2019, quoting passages at pp. 2, 3 and 5. Every address in the document is redacted; the identification of the two as Washington Post reporters rests on their public professional profiles as of 2019, not on the document itself. https://muckrack.com/kimberly-kindy https://muckrack.com/beth-reinhard https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01030637 ↩

  39. “Memorandum of Law in Support of Ghislaine Maxwell’s Motion for Individual Sequestered Juror Voir Dire and Limited Counsel-Conducted Voir Dire,” United States v. Maxwell, S2 20 Cr. 330 (AJN), filed October 13, 2021, printed p. 6. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00011115 ↩

  40. Julie K. Brown, “Perversion of Justice,” Miami Herald, November 28, 2018. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article220097825.html ↩

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