Epstein Data Wiki

Michael Reiter

Properties2
tagsperson, police, palm-beach, 2005-2008, fbi-referral, evidence-custody
aliasesMichael Reiter, Michael S. Reiter, Chief Reiter, Mike Reiter

13 min read

Named on the documents asMichael Reiter, Michael S. Reiter over his own signature, and Chief Reiter in 251 documents1
Size of the file482 documents on his name against a ceiling of 843 on the surname. ⚠ 57% of that ceiling is other people narrating his investigation rather than anything he did2
⚠ The investigation itself is not this pageHe ran the Palm Beach police inquiry into Jeffrey Epstein, and that is his job and is covered at the case page. This page is about six things he did that a chief in his position need not have done2
He asked the State Attorney to consider disqualifying himself1 May 2006, over his own signature: that Barry Krischer “consider if good and sufficient reason exists to require your disqualification”3
He wrote to a newspaper’s editorial page while still serving9 July 2008, nine days after Epstein’s plea: “without the Palm Beach Post’s editorials, I am confident that the outcome would have been infinitely less favorable” — the letter marked NOT FOR PUBLICATION at head and foot4
He named the political pressure under oathA Town elected official, chairman of the police retirement board, came to his office to say he “shouldn’t have referred it to the FBI and Palm Beach solves its own problems”5
He kept the case file for twelve years and gave it to the FBIPaper, newspaper articles, 15 VHS tapes, 39 cassettes, microcassettes and blu-ray discs. ⚠ The date he handed them over is not recorded in any document read6
And Epstein went after his e-mailFebruary 2010: “Reiter emails are filled with communication with the press… Do we go to Reiters attny ( town appointed ). do we go to the judge and ask for all personal emails” — written to four of his lawyers7
Covered elsewhere on this wikiPalm Beach PD investigation · Martin Weinberg

Michael S. Reiter was Chief of Police of Palm Beach during the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein that began in 2005. Nothing on this page is an allegation against him.

⚠ THE INVESTIGATION IS DELIBERATELY NOT THE SUBJECT HERE. For a police chief, investigating is the function. On the arithmetic, 57% of the documents bearing his surname are other people’s accounts of that investigation: court narratives, government reports, press and one bestselling book. On that material alone there would be no page. What follows are five acts the documents attribute to him personally, and one thing that is often attributed to him and should not be.

The letter to the State Attorney

On 1 May 2006 he signed a letter to Barry Krischer, the State Attorney for Palm Beach County, asking him to

consider if good and sufficient reason exists to require your disqualification3

A police chief asking a prosecutor to consider stepping aside from a live case is not a routine act, and the document carries his manuscript signature over his printed name and rank.3

Two months later, on 24 July 2006, he signed letters to the families of complainants notifying them that the matter had been referred to the FBI.3

⚠ The Town later certified, in a sworn discovery response, that those are the only two things he wrote in the matter: “Aside from [those two], no responsive documents exist.”3 That certification is why this page treats the two letters as the whole of his written output rather than a sample of it.

The newspaper

This is the act with no professional justification available, and the page treats it as the most significant thing on it.

On 9 July 2008, nine days after Epstein entered his plea, and while still serving as chief, he wrote privately to the Editor of the Editorial Page of the Palm Beach Post:

without the Palm Beach Post’s editorials, I am confident that the outcome would have been infinitely less favorable4

⚠ The letter is marked NOT FOR PUBLICATION at its head and again at its foot, on the two sheets it runs across.4

The reply is five sentences, and the desk originally quoted only one of them. Besides “I won’t publish it, but I will circulate it,” the editor congratulates him, “nice work on your end”, and volunteers an opinion about two of Epstein’s lawyers, asking why they would “work so hard for such a client. Could that have been because he paid so well?”4

⚠ The desk’s first version of this page called the reply “one sentence” and suppressed the rest. That was an under-quotation which made the exchange look cooler than it reads, and the omitted sentences are the substantive ones.

⚠ This page does not characterise that exchange beyond what it is: a serving police chief thanking a newspaper’s editorial board, privately, for coverage he believed had changed a criminal outcome, and asking that the thanks not be printed. No document read for this page records who it was circulated to.

The official who came to object

He named the political pressure, and the record of it is a civil pleading quoting his deposition rather than the transcript itself. It describes a Town elected official, the chairman of the police retirement board, coming to his office to tell him that he

shouldn’t have referred it to the FBI and Palm Beach solves its own problems5

The official is named in that quoted passage: Jerry Goldsmith.5 The pleading also quotes him answering “Initially, yes” to a question about whether the official was trying to get him to “essentially either drop or smooth over or quiet down the investigation.”5 ⚠ This page reports Reiter’s sworn account of what was said to him. It is his evidence, not a finding, and nothing here is a conclusion about the man he named. ⚠ The same testimony contains that official’s characterisation of the complainants, which is not reproduced.

The boxes

He kept the case file after he left office, and at some point before August 2020 he gave it to the FBI. A Justice Department share path carries a folder named Items provided by REITER, and the material is itemised as paper, newspaper articles, 15 VHS tapes, 39 cassette tapes, microcassettes and four blu-ray discs; a second folder on the same sheet is named Items from Reiter - disks.6

⚠ The desk previously dated this to a window of 19 August to 23 September 2020. That window is the FBI’s transfer of the material to the prosecutors, not his hand-over to the FBI. The earliest message in the thread, of 18 August 2020, already lists “Scans of the files Reiter provided to the FBI…” among items outstanding, so he had given them to the FBI before that window opened, and no document read here dates it.6

An FBI message to a prosecutor records how he came to have them: “The scans all came from Reiter who said he took possession of them after ▮▮▮ passed…these were all turned over in hard copy form to us and scanned.”6 ⚠ The name in that sentence is redacted and this page does not attempt to supply it. Why a retired chief held the original file for twelve years is not explained in any document read here, and the page does not speculate.

Epstein’s interest in his e-mail

In February 2010 Epstein wrote to his own counsel about him:

Reiter emails are filled with communication with the press. Also reflect personal conversations. ( he denied this at deposition, he also suggests using his personal email instead. for communication. we have virtually none of recareys.. personal? . Do we go to Reiters attny ( town appointed ). do we go to the judge and ask for all personal emails that are connected in anyway with my case. ?7

The message went to four of his lawyers, and one of them replied setting out the route: “the ordinary procedure would be to redepose - new evidence - issue subpoena - he would move to quash - we would advocate that his lawyer (assuming he is trustworthy) be allowed to redact personal emails and produce those relating to official business.”7

⚠ The desk’s first version of this page compressed Epstein’s message with two ellipses that each bridged real gaps, and one of them concealed a second route he proposed: going to the chief’s own town-appointed attorney. It is quoted in full above, spelling and punctuation as printed.

⚠ Two things about this need saying carefully. First, the release contains both the assertion and the e-mails, and on the documents read for this page Epstein’s characterisation of their contents is accurate: he was corresponding with journalists, and the letter quoted above is an instance of it. Second, that does not establish that he testified falsely. No document read here contains the deposition question and answer Epstein is referring to, and this page makes no finding about his testimony.7

⚠ His own e-mail reached Epstein by an ordinary route: a Town of Palm Beach public-records release, forwarded to Epstein’s address between 6:00 and 6:18 on the morning of 24 February 2010, under an hour before Epstein wrote the message above.8

Identification

formdocumentsnote
Reiter (bare surname)843the ceiling
"Michael Reiter"482the base, and the best-reaching form
"Chief Reiter"251
"Michael S. Reiter"25the form over his signature
"Mr. Reiter"24⚠ mostly a different man

⚠ FOR THE FIRST TIME ON THIS WIKI, NO MISSPELLING BEATS THE PLAIN FORM. Several corruptions were run and none reaches a document the correct spelling misses.1 ⚠ And "Mr. Reiter", the weakest form, is mostly an executive of an unrelated company, which is why this page does not use it.1

Surname contamination is 7.1%, or 60 of 843, and every one was read. It contains eighteen different individuals, seven unrelated case citations, six instances of the word “reiterate” broken by e-mail encoding, six academic references, and best of all four occurrences of the German common noun, in the title of an Expressionist painting listed on Epstein’s own art schedules, where Reiter means rider.2

Footnotes

  1. Counts on the authoritative pages_fts route, scoped text_content, exact phrases, count(distinct efta_number). ⚠ The tokeniser splits on . and ,, so "Reiter, Michael" and "Reiter Michael" are one query. Plausible OCR corruptions were run and none is a productive key; the two that return anything appear only inside documents already in the set. ⚠ "Mr. Reiter" is dominated by an executive of an unrelated company and is not used as an identifier here. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Same route. Base 482; ceiling 843; contamination 60, each read. Partition of the 843: 782 him, 60 not him, 1 unattributable. Of the 782: 238 court narrative, 138 press and books, 73 government report, 45 deposition, 44 exhibit lists and chronologies, 40 his own authorship or signature, 36 others’ e-mail, 19 evidence custody, 14 Epstein-side targeting, 135 other document types. ⚠ Three of those classes together are 449 documents, 57% of the ceiling, and are other people narrating the investigation. ⚠ 631 documents were not read and are UNTESTED, not cleared; 212 were read individually and 3 were verified at the image. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00013768 p. 1, his letter of 1 May 2006, VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi including the manuscript signature over his printed name and rank; https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01245758 p. 1 and five further copies, the letters of 24 July 2006; and https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00723743 p. 5, the sworn discovery response certifying that no other responsive document exists. The 2006 letters to families are cited for the fact of the notification only; nothing identifying any recipient is reproduced. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  4. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00762994 pp. 1-2. ⚠ His letter BEGINS on p. 1 — carrying the NOT FOR PUBLICATION marking, the salutation and the whole first paragraph — and runs onto p. 2, which is page-stamped EFTA00762995. The desk previously said it was on p. 2. The editor’s reply is on p. 1. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi. ⚠ The page stamp and the addressable identifier differ; the citation is to the addressable one. The NOT FOR PUBLICATION marking appears at both head and foot. ⚠ The text layer of this run breaks the quoted sentence across a quoted-reply marker, rendering it infinitely less > favorable, so no contiguous search finds it; it was read at the image. His signature block on that sheet carries a street address, which is not reproduced. No live page on this wiki carried this document before now. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  5. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01076368 p. 7. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi, and the words and the name are printed unredacted. ⚠⚠ This sheet is a CIVIL PLEADING quoting his deposition, not the transcript. The desk previously called it sworn testimony and said the name was “in the transcript”; it is in a pleading’s quotation of it. The pleading cites deposition pages 72-73, and page 73 is not among the excerpts produced in this release. ⚠ This is his evidence about what was said to him, not a finding about the person he names. ⚠ The same passage contains that person’s characterisation of the complainants, which is withheld, as is a separate allegation in the pleading about telephone records. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  6. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00038117 pp. 5 and 7, a Justice Department share path containing folders named for him, and https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00079380 pp. 1, 2 and 7, FBI messages to a prosecutor. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi. ⚠⚠ The folder is Items provided by REITER. The desk previously rendered it Investigation Items provided by REITER, which is an artefact: the text layer DELETED A BACKSLASH between two path segments and closed the gap. The control is a sibling path on the same sheet. ⚠ The citation was previously to p. 1, which does not mention him at all. ⚠ The redaction in the quoted sentence is a real bar — solid, with normal spacing either side — and is not sought or supplied. ⚠ The desk’s earlier quotation of that sentence ended in a full stop the document does not have, replacing the author’s own ellipsis and dropping a clause; it is now quoted to the end. No document read for this page explains why the file was in his possession, or dates his hand-over to the FBI. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  7. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00762999 p. 1, Epstein’s message of 24 February 2010 to his counsel and the reply setting out the subpoena route. Read from the text layer; not verified at the image. ⚠ The corpus contains both Epstein’s assertion and the e-mails, and on the documents read his characterisation of their contents is accurate. That is NOT a finding that the chief testified falsely: the deposition question and answer he refers to were not located, and this page makes no finding about his testimony. His e-mail entered Epstein’s hands through a Town public-records release forwarded to Epstein’s address. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  8. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00762994 p. 1 and neighbouring sheets in the same run, each carrying a Forwarded by Public Records/PalmBeach on 02/24/2010 line to Epstein’s address, timed between 6:00 and 6:18 that morning. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi. ⚠ The desk previously asserted this route on a sheet that does not carry it; it is carried by these, and the sheet already cited for the newspaper letter is among them. ↩

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