Epstein Data Wiki

Villafaña's written response to OPR, May 2019

Properties1
tagstopic, office-of-professional-responsibility, usao-sdfl, department-of-justice, grand-jury, non-prosecution-agreement, cvra, redactions, 2019

51 min read

What it isA fifty-eight-page written answer by an Assistant U.S. Attorney to written questions put by the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility12
Heading it carries”STATEMENT OF [name blacked out] IN RESPONSE TO APRIL 2, 2019 LETTER FROM [name blacked out]“1
AuthorAssistant U.S. Attorney A. Marie Villafaña, named in the court application and in the resulting order, and blacked out of the heading of both copies of the statement itself, the standalone copy leaving the initial “A.” standing3415
AnsweringA five-page letter of April 2, 2019 from Jeffrey R. Ragsdale, Principal Deputy Director of OPR, to her private counsel Jonathan Biran of Baker Donelson6
Questions put”a total of 17 questions, with an additional six subparts”, by the application’s own count; seventeen numbered questions are printed as headings in the response, ten under “A. The Non-Prosecution Agreement”, five under “B. CVRA Compliance” and two under “C. General”78910
Provided to OPRMay 10, 2019, with a fifty-one-page timeline, a fourteen-page chart, a ten-page exhibit list and 234 exhibits2
In the releaseStandalone as EFTA00225044, Bates EFTA00225044 to EFTA00225101, Data Set 9; and again page for page inside the 294-page compilation EFTA00225378 at printed pages 106 to 1631115
Grand-jury authoritySealed order of May 31, 2019, FGJ 07-103 (WPB), entered nunc pro tunc4

EFTA00225044 is the written answer that a line prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida gave to the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility in the spring of 2019, when OPR was investigating the office’s resolution of the Epstein case and its dealings with the victims. Its first page prints a heading with two names blacked out of it, opens “To the extent possible, I have provided all information relevant to your inquiry, including applicable documents”, and states in its second sentence that the writer no longer holds all of the material and that her memory may be imperfect.1 It ends fifty-seven pages later with “Please advise if further information is needed”, the word “Sincerely,” and a closing block covered by a black box.11

The inquiry itself, OPR’s findings, and the account this document gives of the negotiation are treated on A. Marie Villafaña. The chronology that went with it as Exhibit A-1 is treated on EFTA00224943. This page is about the response as a document: what the release says was submitted, how the document is built, what it records that it could not reconstruct, and how the two copies of it in the release were redacted against each other.

What was submitted, and by what route

The response did not travel alone, and the release describes the parcel twice.

The response was transmitted under a covering letter of May 10, 2019 from Jonathan Biran of Baker Donelson to the Department of Justice at 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Room 3266. That letter is set out on the chronology page and is not retold here. Two things about it belong on this page: the release holds it twice, once at printed page 164 of the compilation and once as a standalone seven-page run, and it records that the exhibits did not travel with the response: encrypted disks had been sent separately and further exhibits emailed.1213

The fuller inventory is in a sealed court application the release also holds, EFTA00225014, whose numbered paragraph 16 reads: “I prepared a 58-page response to Mr. Ragsdale’s letter (‘Response’), along with a 51-page timeline (‘Timeline’), a 14-page chart summarizing victim notifications (‘Chart’), a 10-page exhibit list (‘Exhibit List’), and 234 exhibits (‘Exhibits’). These were all provided to OPR on May 10, 2019. Mr. Biran was provided a copy of the Response and a redacted version of the Chart. He was not provided the other items, that is, the Timeline, the Exhibit List, or the Exhibits.”2 A footnote on the same page adds: “All victim identifying information was redacted. There is no assertion that the Chart contained any 6(e) information.”2

So the response and its exhibits reached OPR by different channels, and the subject attorney’s own counsel was given the narrative and withheld the underlying paper.

The letter it answers

A full-text index covering the EFTA, HOUSE_OVERSIGHT and DOJ-OGR productions together was searched for the letter itself. “April 2, 2019 letter” returns two pages, both of them the response’s own first page in its two copies; “letter of April 2, 2019” returns none; “dated April 2, 2019” returns two, both copies of the covering letter; “Jeffrey R. Ragsdale” returns five, one of which is a letter of his of November 12, 2020, listed in the table below, and none of which is the letter sought here; “Principal Deputy Director of OPR” returns two; and the opening words of the letter’s own text, “has initiated an investigation into certain aspects”, return two.14 The two court applications quote the letter rather than being it. No copy of the letter was found by any of those searches.

What the applications preserve is substantial. They give its length and its author’s office: “On April 2, 2019, Mr. Biran received a five-page letter from Jeffrey R. Ragsdale, Principal Deputy Director of OPR, describing the scope of OPR’s investigation and its view of my role”.6 They then set out its first page in a block quotation. OPR “has initiated an investigation into certain aspects of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida’s (USAO) criminal investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, which began in 2006”, is investigating “the circumstances under which the USAO entered into a non-prosecution agreement with Mr. Epstein in 2007, the terms of the agreement, and the government’s efforts to ensure compliance with the agreement”, and is “also investigating allegations stemming from the February 21, 2019 order issued by U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra”. The passage closes on the recipient: “Your client, Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) Ann [black box], was the lead prosecutor in the Epstein case, and she participated in the negotiation of the non-prosecution agreement, efforts to ensure compliance with it, and decisions concerning victim notifications”. The citation given is “(4/2/2019 Ragsdale ltr to Biran at 1)”.6

They also give the shape of the questions: “I was then instructed, through counsel, to answer a total of 17 questions, with an additional six subparts, on a number of topics”, and quote one of them from the letter’s second page, “[e]xplain why the USAO decided to initiate a federal grand jury investigation”.7 That quoted question is printed word for word in the response, as the second half of the heading numbered 1.8

The two applications therefore preserve the letter’s length, its author, its date, its opening paragraph, the number of its questions and the text of at least one of them. No copy of the letter itself was returned by any of the searches above.

How the document is organised

The response is built to the letter’s own outline. Its fourth page ends the introductory matter and opens the answers with a bold, underlined part heading, “A. The Non-Prosecution Agreement”, under which the letter’s first question is reproduced verbatim in bold as the heading of its own answer.8 The pattern holds to the end: “B. CVRA Compliance” opens on page 38, immediately under the answer to question A.10, and “C. General” opens on page 52.910 Counting the numbered question headings printed across all fifty-eight pages of EFTA00225044, there are seventeen: ten under A, five under B, two under C, the numbering in each part running consecutively from 1 with no gap.15 Question A.4 and question A.8 each carry lettered sub-questions beneath them.1617

Two of the answers do nothing but redirect. The whole of the answer to question A.6, which asks for “a detailed description of all settlement negotiations conducted in this matter”, reads: “Please see my response to Question A.3.”18 Questions B.3 and B.4 each open “Greater detail is provided in the answer to Item B-2, above, and the exhibits referenced therein”, and then add a short passage of their own.19

The document calls itself two different things and closes as a third. On page 37 it refers to material “catalogued throughout this letter”; on page 56 to disagreements listed “[t]hroughout this memo”; and page 58 ends “Please advise if further information is needed”, followed by “Sincerely,” and, beneath it, the characters “s/” and a black box a little under five text lines deep, covering between a third and two fifths of the width of the text block. No date appears anywhere on that closing page.202111

The two answers in part C are themselves lists. The answer to C.1, which asks the writer to “identify any disagreements or concerns expressed by government personnel as to these matters”, runs as a lettered catalogue from a to o across pages 52 to 56, some items carrying roman sub-items of their own.1022232421 The answer to C.2, whose question reads “Identify any occasion during which you were or felt pressured, intimidated, threatened, coerced, or in any other manner inappropriately influenced to take a position or action in the Epstein case with which you disagreed or which caused you concern”, opens “Throughout this memo, I have listed a number of disagreements” and then numbers nineteen “broad categories” of disagreement, running from meeting defence counsel before the investigation was complete to “allowing Epstein to repeatedly breach the NPA and then claim that he just got bad advice from his lawyers and ‘cure’ the breaches.”2125

What the response records that it could not reconstruct

The document is unusually explicit about the limits of its own evidence, and the concessions are not confined to the opening.

Its first paragraph gives three causes and one consequence: “Due to the passage of time, updates to various software and hardware, and the crash of my work laptop several years ago, I no longer have every piece of relevant material and my memory may be imperfect.” The same paragraph rules a whole class of events outside its knowledge: “there were numerous oral and written communications between others at the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Justice Department with counsel for Mr. Epstein. While in some cases I was told of the communications or cc’ed on emails or letters summarizing the communications, for many conversations, meetings, and emails, I do not have knowledge of what occurred.”1

A footnote to that page explains what the exhibits are and are not. Where originals survive she has used them; “[i]n some cases, all that I have are the electronic documents (i.e., the Word Perfect letter that was printed, signed, and mailed or faxed). Because our computers no longer have Word Perfect, I have used ‘Quick Print’ which has distorted the formatting.” And then a caution against reading the exhibits as physical evidence: “The fact that something does not contain a signature does not mean that it is a draft, it just means that it was printed from the electronic version and I no longer have (or never had) a copy of the original.”1

Page 4 repeats the caution over the whole: “Given the sheer volume of materials involved here and the passage of time, while I have worked diligently to answer your questions as fully as possible, I certainly could have missed something amongst the thousands of pages of emails, drafts, and hard copy and electronic documents.”26

The individual gaps are dated and specific. A footnote on page 7, attached to an account of a meeting with the U.S. Attorney and the First Assistant, opens “I do not have a contemporaneous memorandum and cannot find the date of the meeting”, and substitutes a July 13, 2007 email in which she had described the same meeting at the time.27 A footnote on page 24 records a gap at the centre of the agreement’s terms: “This somehow resulted in 18 months’ imprisonment. I do not recall how the prison term was decreased from 20 months on September 11, 2007 to 18 months on September 13, 2007.”28 Page 32 records a document she looked for and did not find: “At some point, Mr. [black box] sent me an email about wanting to buy me a cup of coffee. I was not able to find the email while preparing this response, but with additional time, I can probably locate it.”29 The answer to question B.2, which asks her to “[i]dentify all victims in this case to whom written or oral notifications were made, when and how each notification was made, and the contents of the notifications”, rests on an attached chart and qualifies it: “Due to the passage of time, it is impossible for me to give exact dates and the exact content of each conversation… I have qualified my answers on the chart accordingly.”30

Some answers are refusals to speculate about other people. The answer to question A.8.a, which asks what research was done into the propriety of a state plea in exchange for federal non-prosecution, reads in full: “I did not do any research on this point. I do not know whether USA Acosta or Criminal Chief [black box] conducted any research or obtained any guidance or approval from the Department.”29 The answer to question B.3 says of a decision to vary from the practice of conferring with victims that “I do not know the basis for that decision”, and of the assertion that it was made with the U.S. Attorney’s concurrence, “I do not know the veracity of that statement.”19

An answer with no comparator

Question A.10 asks her to “[i]dentify any cases in which you have been involved as an AUSA, or of which you were otherwise aware, that were resolved through a non-prosecution agreement.” The answer is six printed lines: “I have not been involved in, nor am I aware of, any other cases that have been resolved via a non-prosecution agreement.” The only comparable disposition she offers is a pre-trial diversion agreement she recommended once in eighteen years with the Department, for a doctor who wrote fraudulent opioid prescriptions for her own post-cancer pain, and she records that it was “vetted and approved through the chain of command in accordance with Department policy (the USAM) and the USAO’s Criminal Circular.”31

Two sentences the report attributes to her

OPR’s report of November 2020 quotes the subject attorneys throughout, and at the point where it deals with the FBI’s victim notification letters it introduces two quotations with “according to Villafaña” and “Villafaña asserted to OPR”. Both sentences are printed, word for word, in the written response she had submitted eighteen months earlier.

The report, at its narrative page 262, states: “Neither FBI case agent reviewed any of the letters sent by the FBI’s Victim Specialist. According to Villafaña, ‘The decision to issue the letters and the wording of those letters were exclusively FBI decisions.’”32 Page 49 of the response reads: “The letters containing the quoted language were prepared by FBI victim-witness specialist [black box] and I was unaware of them until they were collected in connection with the Jane Doe v. United States litigation. I do not recall ever discussing the wording of the FBI’s letters prior to their distribution. The decision to issue the letters and the wording of those letters were exclusively FBI decisions.”33

The report prints the same quotation a second time, forty narrative pages earlier, and there it runs “The decision to issue the letter and the wording of those letters were exclusively FBI decisions”, singular where the response and the report’s later printing both read “letters”.343233 That earlier passage carries a second quotation immediately after it: “Nevertheless, Villafaña asserted to OPR that from her perspective, the language regarding the ongoing investigation ‘was absolutely true and, despite being fully advised of our ongoing investigative activities, no one in my supervisory chain ever told me that the case was not under investigation.’”34 Page 51 of the response ends: “from my perspective, that language was absolutely true and, despite being fully advised of our ongoing investigative activities, no one in my supervisory chain ever told me that the case was not under investigation.”35

Neither passage in the report names the document it is quoting. What the match establishes is that at least part of what the report presents as her account to OPR is the text of this response, and that the response is therefore a primary source for language the report carries at one remove.

On the substance of the office’s decisions, OPR’s own conclusion belongs beside her account of them. On the agreement, the report concludes “that Menchel, Sloman, Lourie, and Villafaña did not commit professional misconduct with respect to any aspect of the NPA because they acted under Acosta’s direction and with his approval.”36 The response reaches the same relation from the other side, on its final page: “Many of these decisions were incorrect, in my opinion, but I did not believe that they were illegal. As a line AUSA, I was duty bound to follow the directives of the U.S. Attorney, which I did.”11

The same statement, produced twice, redacted to two standards

The response appears twice in this release, standalone as EFTA00225044 and page for page inside EFTA00225378, where its fifty-eight pages occupy printed pages 106 to 163. The redactions on the two copies of its first page are close to complementary, and reading them side by side restores sentences that neither copy prints whole.

On the standalone copy the heading reads “STATEMENT OF A. [black box] IN RESPONSE TO / APRIL 2, 2019 LETTER FROM [black box]”: the author’s forename initial survives and the rest of her name does not, and the addressee of the letter she is answering is removed. The body sentence reads “I have organized the response to conform with the April 2, 2019 letter from [black box] to Jonathan Biran”: her counsel is named, the letter’s author is not.1

On the compilation copy the same page reads “STATEMENT OF [black box] IN RESPONSE TO / APRIL 2, 2019 LETTER FROM JEFFREY R. RAGSDALE”: the author’s name is removed entirely, including the initial, and the letter’s author is printed in full. The body sentence reverses in the same way, “the April 2, 2019 letter from Jeffrey R. Ragsdale to [black box]”.5

The footnote at the foot of that page moves the same way. The standalone copy prints “I often drafted letters for the signatures of [black box], Jeff [black box], and Alex Acosta”; the compilation copy prints “I often drafted letters for the signatures of Andrew Lourie, Jeff Sloman, and Alex Acosta”.15 The one redaction the two copies of this page share is the sentence naming three of Epstein’s personal assistants, blacked out on both.15

Redaction within the standalone copy is not uniform by category either. On page 29, answering a question about interactions with defence counsel, the image prints Lilly Ann Sanchez, Gerry Lefcourt, Roy Black, Nate Dershowitz, Jay Lefkowitz, Jack Goldberger, Guy Lewis, Mike Tein, Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz in the clear, while blacking out the surnames of the government participants named alongside them in the same sentences.37 The U.S. Attorney is the exception on that page: “Messrs. Acosta” and “USA Acosta” stand in the clear in the same paragraph from which the other government surnames are removed.37

That exception does not survive the move to the other copy, and past the first page the direction of the difference between the two copies is not constant. On page 29 the compilation prints “Jeff Sloman and/or Andy Lourie” where the standalone leaves the forename “Jeff” standing and blacks out the surname after it and both names that follow; and in the next paragraph the compilation covers the U.S. Attorney’s name at both places the standalone prints it, and covers the words “FAUSA” and “Chief” as well.38 On page 55 the standalone prints “USA Acosta” in the clear five times and the compilation covers all five; on page 58 the standalone prints it in the clear five times and the compilation covers all five again.39114041 Which of the two copies is the less redacted one is therefore not a property of the run but of the page, and of the zone within the page. This page opened four of the fifty-eight pages in both copies, 1, 29, 55 and 58, and says nothing about the other fifty-four.

The application, in two drafts

The court application that describes the submission exists in the release in two versions, and they are not two scans of one document.

EFTA00225014, eleven pages, is written in the first person. Its opening line reads “I, AUSA A. [black box], an attorney for the government as defined by Rule 1(b)(1)(B) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure hereby applies to the Court”.42 EFTA00225025, thirteen pages, is written for the office: “COMES NOW THE UNITED STATES, by and through the undersigned Assistant United States Attorney”.43 Both are captioned in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, “FGJ 07-103(WPB), U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks, IN RE: GRAND JURY PROCEEDINGS, SEALED APPLICATION FOR PERMISSION TO DISCLOSE GRAND JURY MATERIAL AND FOR ENTRY OF A PROTECTIVE ORDER”.4243

On page 2 of the first-person version, the phrase “over my objection” appears four times, and each of the four is highlighted in yellow on the produced image: twice in the paragraph recording that the office entered into the agreement and did so without conferring with the victims, and twice in the paragraph recording that the office allowed Epstein the benefits of the agreement after he had “unsuccessfully pursued his claims as high as the Deputy Attorney General”, and that it gave no written notice of the state plea proceeding in advance of the change of plea.44 The corresponding paragraphs on page 2 of the third-person version do not contain the phrase, and the sentence in which the first-person draft records that Epstein alleged “members of the USAO (including me) had engaged in prosecutorial misconduct” is replaced there by “challenging both the legality of the NPA and the validity of the investigation.”45 Both readings are from the images of the two pages.

The third-person version also carries a section the first-person one does not, headed “CONCURRENCE REGARDING THE FILING OF THIS MOTION”: the filing “has been approved by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and the Chief of the Criminal Division”; the Criminal Chief “has conferred with the First Assistant United States Attorney of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, to which the Epstein criminal matter was referred after the Southern District of Florida was recused, and the Middle District has no objection”; the Criminal Chief also conferred with the General Counsel’s Office of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, “who has no objection”; and “OPR has advised that it takes no position on the filing of this motion.”46

Its last page opens with the tail of the CONCLUSION begun on the page before, numbered item 3, “an Order sealing this Application and the accompanying Orders.” Beneath that is a signature block for the United States. Under “Respectfully submitted,” the printed name “ARIANA FAJARDO ORSHAN / UNITED STATES ATTORNEY” stands over a date line reading “Dated: May ________, 2019” with the space left blank, and a “By:” rule with nothing written above it; the printed name beneath that rule is covered by a black box whose upper edge does not quite clear the tops of its capitals.47

Both versions record why the application was needed at all. After the material went to OPR, an attorney there raised Rule 6(e): the first-person version states that she and her counsel “received communications from an attorney at OPR stating that she believed that I had improperly disclosed material covered by Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(e) to Mr. Biran”, which it attributes in part to “her mistaken belief that I had provided to Mr. Biran the Timeline, the Exhibit List, and the Exhibits.”48

The order

On May 31, 2019 the court granted it. The “SEALED ORDER GRANTING APPLICATION FOR PERMISSION TO DISCLOSE GRAND JURY MATERIAL” authorises the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, “including Assistant United States Attorney A. Marie Villafaña”, and OPR, to disclose to Jonathan Biran matters occurring before the grand jury necessary to let her answer OPR’s written questions, prepare for its interview of her, and take part in it, and provides: “To the extent that [black box] 10, 2019 Response to OPR’s written questions and any drafts thereof disclosed any material that arguably referred to matters occurring before the grand jury, this Order is entered nunc pro tunc to authorize those disclosures to Mr. Biran.”4

The order is dated in West Palm Beach; the day of the month, “31st”, is written in by hand in ink on the printed line, a handwritten signature stands above the printed name and title “DONALD M. MIDDLEBROOKS / UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE”, and a red certification stamp of the Clerk of Court, “Angela E. Noble, Clerk, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida”, carries a signature in blue ink and a handwritten date “5/31/19”. The list under “Certified Copies Furnished to:” is a black box.4

The response and its exhibits had gone to OPR three weeks earlier. The chronology page sets out the accompanying protective order and what it withheld from counsel.

Documents

DocumentDescription
EFTA00225044The fifty-eight-page written response, standalone, Bates EFTA00225044 to EFTA00225101, Data Set 9
EFTA00225378The 294-page compilation; the same response occupies printed pages 106 to 163, redacted to a different standard
EFTA00223095The Baker Donelson covering letter of May 10, 2019, standalone, seven pages
EFTA00225014Sealed application to disclose grand jury material, first-person version, eleven pages; quotes the April 2, 2019 letter and itemises the submission
EFTA00225025Sealed application, third-person version, thirteen pages, with the concurrence section and an unexecuted signature block
EFTA00225040Sealed order granting the application, May 31, 2019
EFTA02830776OPR Report, November 2020, filed as an exhibit in United States v. Maxwell
EFTA00099667OPR’s one-page transmittal of the report, November 12, 2020

Footnotes

  1. “STATEMENT OF A. [black box] IN RESPONSE TO / APRIL 2, 2019 LETTER FROM [black box]”, EFTA00225044, p. 1 of 58 (page stamp EFTA00225044). The heading’s second black bar covers the whole of the sender’s name, and the name given for him in the body text of this page is sourced to the second copy cited below and to the court application, not to this page. Nothing on this page is taken from its extraction. Opening paragraph quoted in the body text, including “Due to the passage of time, updates to various software and hardware, and the crash of my work laptop several years ago, I no longer have every piece of relevant material and my memory may be imperfect”; “I have organized the response to conform with the April 2, 2019 letter from [black box] to Jonathan Biran”; and “for many conversations, meetings, and emails, I do not have knowledge of what occurred.” Footnote 1 on the same page: “With regard to the exhibits, whenever possible, I have used copies of original documents or ‘scanned’ originals that were made at the time. In some cases, all that I have are the electronic documents (i.e., the Word Perfect letter that was printed, signed, and mailed or faxed). Because our computers no longer have Word Perfect, I have used ‘Quick Print’ which has distorted the formatting.”; “The fact that something does not contain a signature does not mean that it is a draft, it just means that it was printed from the electronic version and I no longer have (or never had) a copy of the original.”; “For example, I often drafted letters for the signatures of [black box], Jeff [black box], and Alex Acosta.” The sentence naming three personal assistants is blacked out and is not reproduced. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10

  2. EFTA00225014, p. 6 of 11, numbered paragraph 16, quoted in full in the body text, and its footnote 3: “All victim identifying information was redacted. There is no assertion that the Chart contained any 6(e) information.” The corresponding paragraph in the second version, EFTA00225025, p. 6 of 13, numbered 15, gives the same figures with “and collected 234 exhibits” where this version reads “and 234 exhibits”. Both read from the page images at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. EFTA00225025, p. 12 of 13, the CONCLUSION: “WHEREFORE, the United States respectfully requests that the Court enter: 1. an Order authorizing the disclosure nunc pro tunc of matters occurring before the grand jury to attorney Jonathan Biran of the firm Baker Donelson to allow him to fulfill his obligations in representing Assistant U.S. Attorney A. Marie Villafaña in connection with an investigation conducted by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility”. The name is printed in the clear on the image of this page. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩

  4. “SEALED ORDER GRANTING APPLICATION FOR PERMISSION TO DISCLOSE GRAND JURY MATERIAL”, FGJ 07-103(WPB), EFTA00225040, p. 2 of 2 (page stamp EFTA00225041): “Accordingly, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, including Assistant United States Attorney A. Marie Villafaña, and the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility may disclose to attorney Jonathan Biran matters occurring before the grand jury necessary to: (a) allow [black box] to respond to OPR’s written questions; (b) prepare for OPR’s interview of [black box] (c) participate fully in OPR’s interview of AUSA Villafaña.”; “To the extent that [black box] 10, 2019 Response to OPR’s written questions and any drafts thereof disclosed any material that arguably referred to matters occurring before the grand jury, this Order is entered nunc pro tunc to authorize those disclosures to Mr. Biran.”; “This Order and the attached Protective Order shall be SEALED, except that copies may be provided to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, which may provide copies to OPR and attorney Jonathan Biran.”; “IT IS SO ORDERED. Done and Ordered in West Palm Beach, Florida, this 31st day of May, 2019.” The characters “31st” are written on the printed rule in a cursive hand, in a stroke that varies in weight and sits off the line of the printed text. A handwritten signature crosses the rule above the printed “DONALD M. MIDDLEBROOKS / UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE”. A red stamp reads “Certified to be a true and correct copy of the document on file / Angela E. Noble, Clerk, U.S. District Court / Southern District of Florida”, with a signature in blue ink on the “By” line and “5/31/19” written on the “Date” line. The list under “Certified Copies Furnished to:” is a black box. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  5. The same page of the same statement, produced a second time inside the compilation EFTA00225378, p. 106 of 294 (page stamp EFTA00225483), and footed “Page 1 of 58”. Heading: “STATEMENT OF [black box] IN RESPONSE TO / APRIL 2, 2019 LETTER FROM JEFFREY R. RAGSDALE”. Body: “I have organized the response to conform with the April 2, 2019 letter from Jeffrey R. Ragsdale to [black box].” Footnote 1: “I often drafted letters for the signatures of Andrew Lourie, Jeff Sloman, and Alex Acosta.” The personal-assistants sentence is blacked out on this copy as well. EFTA00225378 is SUPPRESSED in this desk’s registers; citation and quotation are permitted, and the register withholds nothing from the public. Separately, the site’s own PII gate also flags this identifier, which removes the PDF embed, the RollCall mirror links and the Related Documents panel from its document page; the direct link to the Justice Department’s own copy is unaffected, and the site continues to serve its own copy of the file, flagged as redacted. The two lists are different lists and neither contains the other: of the desk register’s 324 entries, 47 resolve in the served status table and ten of those 47 are flagged by the site’s gate, so this document is not the only one on both. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  6. EFTA00225014, p. 6 of 11, numbered paragraph 14 and the block quotation beneath it, quoted in the body text; the citation line at the end of the quotation reads “(4/2/2019 Ragsdale ltr to Biran at 1)”. The subject attorney’s surname is blacked out inside the quotation, leaving “Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) Ann [black box]”, and is not reproduced from this page. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  7. EFTA00225014, p. 6 of 11, numbered paragraph 15: “I was then instructed, through counsel, to answer a total of 17 questions, with an additional six subparts, on a number of topics (id.). Some of the questions clearly called for information regarding the grand jury, for example, ‘[e]xplain why the USAO decided to initiate a federal grand jury investigation’ (id. at 2).” Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2

  8. EFTA00225044, p. 4 of 58. Part heading, bold and underlined: “A. The Non-Prosecution Agreement”. Question 1, printed in bold beneath it: “Describe the circumstances under which the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein was referred to the USAO, including when, why, how, and by whom the referral was made. Explain why the USAO decided to initiate a federal grand jury investigation into this matter, including what federal interests were perceived to be involved, and identify the individuals participating in the decision.” Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  9. EFTA00225044, p. 38 of 58. Part heading “B. CVRA Compliance”, printed immediately below the answer to question A.10 and above question B.1, “Describe your understanding of any USAO, Department, or FBI policy or practice regarding victim notification rights, obligations, or procedures that were in effect from the time the federal investigation of Mr. Epstein began to the time that he entered his state plea…” Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2

  10. EFTA00225044, p. 52 of 58. Part heading “C. General” and question C.1, “As to all of the foregoing matters, identify any disagreements or concerns expressed by government personnel as to these matters, the parties involved, how the disagreements were resolved, and any concerns you had about any such resolution and the individuals, if any, with whom you discussed your concerns.” The lettered catalogue begins on this page at a and b. A quoted email of January 31, 2008 on this page describes victim interviews; it names no victim and nothing from it is reproduced here. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  11. EFTA00225044, p. 58 of 58 (page stamp EFTA00225101): “Many of these decisions were incorrect, in my opinion, but I did not believe that they were illegal. As a line AUSA, I was duty bound to follow the directives of the U.S. Attorney, which I did.”; “Please advise if further information is needed.” “USA Acosta” is printed on this page five times, in the second, third and fourth paragraphs of the page. Below that, right of centre, the word “Sincerely,” and beneath it the characters “s/” followed by a solid black box. Measured on the 400 dpi render: the box runs 362 px deep against a text-line pitch of 76.6 px taken from ten line-to-line intervals in the body of the same sheet, so a little under five text lines; it is 921 px wide over most of its height and 1,013 px at a step that protrudes at its lower left, against a text block 2,601 px wide, which is 35 to 39 per cent. The “s/” stands clear of the box’s left edge. No date is printed anywhere on the page. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  12. Letter on Baker Donelson letterhead, “100 LIGHT STREET, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND 21202”, dated May 10, 2019 and marked “VIA EMAIL ONLY”, EFTA00225378, p. 164 of 294 (page stamp EFTA00225541). The addressee’s name-and-title block is covered by a black bar above “U.S. Department of Justice / 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. - Room 3266 / Washington, D.C. 20530”: measured on the 400 dpi render, the bar is 163 px deep against a 77 px line pitch taken from the three address lines below it, so two text lines deep. The addressee’s name is behind that bar, and this page does not name the addressee. Subject line: “Re: OPR Investigation Relating to Jeffrey Epstein Federal Criminal Investigation”. The letter opens “Attached please find the written response of Assistant United States Attorney [black box] to the letter of Jeffrey R. Ragsdale, dated April 2, 2019, regarding the criminal investigation of Jeffrey Epstein”, and continues: “[black box] separately has sent you encrypted disks containing the exhibits referenced in her written response, and has emailed other exhibits that were not included on the disks.” The second paragraph reads “Mr. Ragsdale’s letter also requested background information concerning AUSA [black box] professional background and experience. The remainder of this letter provides that information.” Read from the page image at 300 dpi and re-read at 400 dpi. ↩

  13. The same letter produced standalone as EFTA00223095, seven pages, Data Set 9. Cited for the existence of the second copy; this page did not compare the two at the image. ↩

  14. Searches run against pages_fts over the whole corpus, which indexes the EFTA, HOUSE_OVERSIGHT and DOJ-OGR productions together, each scoped to text_content. "April 2, 2019 letter" returns 2 pages, EFTA00225044 p. 1 and EFTA00225378 p. 106. "letter of April 2, 2019" returns 0. "dated April 2, 2019" returns 2, the two copies of the Baker Donelson letter. "Jeffrey R. Ragsdale" returns 5: EFTA00099667 p. 1, EFTA00225014 p. 6, EFTA00225044 p. 1, and EFTA00225378 pp. 106 and 164 — that is, the two copies of the statement’s first page, the first-person application, OPR’s 2020 transmittal, and the compilation copy of the covering letter only. The standalone copy of the covering letter does not match the full name; its extraction carries “Ragsdale” without the forename and initial. "Ragsdale" alone returns 23 pages, of which the ten also matching "Epstein" include EFTA00099667 p. 1, OPR’s transmittal of its report in November 2020. "Principal Deputy Director of OPR" returns 2, both applications. "has initiated an investigation into certain aspects" returns 2, both applications. "Explain why the USAO decided to initiate a federal grand jury investigation" returns 1, EFTA00225378 p. 109, which is p. 4 of the second copy of the statement; the same words are printed on p. 4 of EFTA00225044 and were read there at the image, the extraction of that page having broken the phrase. ↩

  15. Count of the numbered question headings printed in EFTA00225044. Ten under part A, at pp. 4 (Q1), 7 (Q2), 14 (Q3), 24 (Q4), 29 (Q5), 30 (Q6 and Q7), 32 (Q8), 37 (Q9) and 38 (Q10); five under part B, at pp. 38 (Q1), 41 (Q2), 48 (Q3 and Q4) and 49 (Q5); two under part C, at pp. 52 (Q1) and 56 (Q2). Seventeen headings, and the numbering within each part runs consecutively from 1 with no missing number. The application’s own figure, “a total of 17 questions, with an additional six subparts”, is at EFTA00225014, p. 6. ↩

  16. EFTA00225044, p. 24 of 58. Question A.4: “Explain fully the process and circumstances leading to the development of the following terms of the non-prosecution agreement:”, the lettered sub-questions following on the pages after it. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩

  17. EFTA00225044, p. 32 of 58. Question A.8: “Describe any research conducted by you, or anyone else within the USAO, into law or policy regarding any of the following issues:”, followed by sub-question a, “The propriety of permitting a person to plead guilty to state court charges in exchange for an agreement by the USAO to refrain from federal prosecution. In your response, you should identify any USAO or Department policies that were considered by the USAO, and any effort by the USAO to obtain guidance or approval from the Department to use a non-prosecution agreement to resolve this case.” Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩

  18. EFTA00225044, p. 30 of 58. Question A.6: “Provide a detailed description of all settlement negotiations conducted in this matter in which you took part or of which you were otherwise aware, including all terms of settlement that were discussed, considered, and rejected during the negotiations. Identify all individuals who participated in those negotiations, including government personnel and defense counsel. In each case, identify all participants and describe the discussions that occurred.” The entire answer beneath it reads: “Please see my response to Question A.3.” Question A.7 follows on the same page. Read from the page image at 200 dpi. ↩

  19. EFTA00225044, p. 48 of 58. Questions B.3 and B.4 both open “Greater detail is provided in the answer to Item B-2, above, and the exhibits referenced therein.” Also on this page: “At the time of plea negotiations, Criminal Chief [black box] made the decision that he had the authority to vary from the general policy of conferring with victims before entering into a plea. I do not know the basis for that decision (see Exhibit 3). His email to me said that the decision was made with USA Acosta’s concurrence. I do not know the veracity of that statement.”; and “USA Acosta decided that the USAO should not provide any notifications of a state court proceeding.” Read from the page image at 200 dpi. ↩ ↩2

  20. EFTA00225044, p. 37 of 58, answering question A.9: “Many instances of notices of breach have been catalogued throughout this letter, as well as my efforts to force Epstein to abide by the terms of the NPA prior to declaring a breach”. Read from the page image at 200 dpi. ↩

  21. EFTA00225044, p. 56 of 58. Lettered item o of the C.1 catalogue ends on this page. Question C.2: “Identify any occasion during which you were or felt pressured, intimidated, threatened, coerced, or in any other manner inappropriately influenced to take a position or action in the Epstein case with which you disagreed or which caused you concern, and the individuals, if any, with whom you discussed such concerns.” Answer opens: “Throughout this memo, I have listed a number of disagreements. In broad categories, I disagreed with: (1) meeting with defense counsel before the investigation was completed and disclosing to them our charging strategy;” and continues through item (12) at the foot of the page. Read from the page image at 200 dpi. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  22. EFTA00225044, p. 53 of 58: lettered items c, d and e of the C.1 catalogue, item d carrying roman sub-items i to iv. Read from the page image at 200 dpi. ↩

  23. EFTA00225044, p. 54 of 58: lettered items f and g, item g carrying roman sub-items. Read from the page image at 200 dpi. ↩

  24. EFTA00225044, p. 55 of 58: the last roman sub-item of g, then lettered items h, i, j, k, l, m and n. Read from the page image at 200 dpi. ↩

  25. EFTA00225044, p. 57 of 58, carrying items (13) to (19) of the same list and closing “(19) allowing Epstein to repeatedly breach the NPA and then claim that he just got bad advice from his lawyers and ‘cure’ the breaches.” The same page prints her July 13, 2007 reply to the Criminal Chief, whose name is blacked out: “With respect to your questions regarding my judgment, I will simply say that disagreements about strategy and raising concerns about the forgotten voices of the victims in this case should not be classified as a lapse in judgment. This Office should seek to foster spirited debate about the law and the use of prosecutorial discretion.” Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩

  26. EFTA00225044, p. 4 of 58: “In response to your questions, I have attempted to distill the past 13 years of emails, letters, research, pleadings, and conversations into a coherent document and attach the most relevant items. Given the sheer volume of materials involved here and the passage of time, while I have worked diligently to answer your questions as fully as possible, I certainly could have missed something amongst the thousands of pages of emails, drafts, and hard copy and electronic documents. If there are additional items or topics that need further explanation or more documentation, I can delve further.” Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩

  27. EFTA00225044, p. 7 of 58. Question A.2 and the subheading “My Role” appear on this page. Footnote 8: “I do not have a contemporaneous memorandum and cannot find the date of the meeting. In a July 13, 2007 email exchange between myself and Criminal Chief [black box], I describe the meeting as follows: ‘I summarized the case and the State Attorney’s Office’s handling of it. I acknowledged that we needed to do work to collect the evidence establishing a federal nexus, and I noted the time and money that would be required for an investigation. I said that I was willing to invest that time and the FBI was willing to invest the money, but I didn’t want to get to the end and then have the Office be intimidated by the high-powered lawyers. I was assured that that would not happen.’ (See Exhibit 3.)” Read from the page image at 200 dpi. ↩

  28. EFTA00225044, p. 24 of 58, footnote 20: “This somehow resulted in 18 months’ imprisonment. I do not recall how the prison term was decreased from 20 months on September 11, 2007 to 18 months on September 13, 2007.” Read from the page image at 200 dpi. ↩

  29. EFTA00225044, p. 32 of 58: “At some point, Mr. [black box] sent me an email about wanting to buy me a cup of coffee. I was not able to find the email while preparing this response, but with additional time, I can probably locate it. I don’t believe I ever answered Mr. [black box]. I know I never met him for coffee.” The answer to question A.8.a on the same page reads in full: “I did not do any research on this point. I do not know whether USA Acosta or Criminal Chief [black box] conducted any research or obtained any guidance or approval from the Department.” Read from the page image at 200 dpi. ↩ ↩2

  30. EFTA00225044, p. 41 of 58. Question B.2 quoted in the body text. The answer refers to an attached chart and then qualifies what the chart can carry: “Due to the passage of time, it is impossible for me to give exact dates and the exact content of each conversation. Also, there are some victims that I specifically remember meeting with. There are some that I know I did not meet with. There are others that I believe I met with, but I am not certain. I have qualified my answers on the chart accordingly.” Nothing about any individual named or described in that chart is reproduced or characterised here. Read from the page image at 200 dpi. ↩

  31. EFTA00225044, p. 38 of 58. Question A.10: “Identify any cases in which you have been involved as an AUSA, or of which you were otherwise aware, that were resolved through a non-prosecution agreement.” Answer: “I have not been involved in, nor am I aware of, any other cases that have been resolved via a non-prosecution agreement. On one occasion, in my eighteen years with the Justice Department, I recommended a Pre-Trial Diversion agreement for a doctor who wrote and filled a small number of fraudulent opioid prescriptions that she took herself for her post-cancer pain. The recommendation was vetted and approved through the chain of command in accordance with Department policy (the USAM) and the USAO’s Criminal Circular.” The answer occupies six printed lines, at rows 691, 766, 846, 921, 996 and 1075 of the 400 dpi render, between the bold question block and the “B. CVRA Compliance” heading. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩

  32. OPR Report, narrative p. 262. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02830776 p.288 “Neither FBI case agent reviewed any of the letters sent by the FBI’s Victim Specialist. According to Villafaña, ‘The decision to issue the letters and the wording of those letters were exclusively FBI decisions.’” The sentence carrying the Villafaña quotation has no footnote marker of its own; the sentence before it ends with a superscript 411, and note 411 at the foot of the same page sources the two FBI case agents’ statements, not the quotation. Read from the page image at 300 dpi and again at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2

  33. EFTA00225044, p. 49 of 58, answering question B.5, “Explain why victims who received victim notification letters after the non-prosecution agreement was first signed in September 2007 were notified in the letters that the federal investigation of Jeffrey Epstein ‘is currently under investigation.’” The answer’s first paragraph is quoted in the body text. The FBI victim-witness specialist’s name is blacked out on this page and is not reproduced. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2

  34. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Professional Responsibility, 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 and Its Interactions with Victims during the Investigation, November 2020, filed as Government Exhibit 3, Document 204-3 in United States v. Maxwell, No. 1:20-cr-00330-PAE (S.D.N.Y.), April 16, 2021; narrative p. 222. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02830776 p.248 “Villafaña told OPR that she did not recall discussing the content of the letters at the time they were sent to the victims, or reviewing the letters until they were collected for the CVRA litigation, sometime after July 2008. Rather, according to Villafaña, ‘The decision to issue the letter and the wording of those letters were exclusively FBI decisions.’ Nevertheless, Villafaña asserted to OPR that from her perspective, the language regarding the ongoing investigation ‘was absolutely true and, despite being fully advised of our ongoing investigative activities, no one in my supervisory chain ever told me that the case was not under investigation.’” The word “letter” in the first quotation is singular on this page and plural where the report repeats the quotation at narrative p. 262; both were read at 300 dpi and neither reading is an artefact of the extraction. Read from the page image at 300 dpi. ↩ ↩2

  35. EFTA00225044, p. 51 of 58, closing the answer to question B.5: “Although I did not know that Victim-Witness Specialist [black box] letters contained the language that the Epstein case was ‘currently under investigation,’ from my perspective, that language was absolutely true and, despite being fully advised of our ongoing investigative activities, no one in my supervisory chain ever told me that the case was not under investigation.” Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩

  36. OPR Report, narrative p. 134. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02830776 p.160 “Therefore, in addition to the fact that OPR did not find a violation of a clear and unambiguous standard as discussed below, OPR concludes that Menchel, Sloman, Lourie, and Villafaña did not commit professional misconduct with respect to any aspect of the NPA because they acted under Acosta’s direction and with his approval.” Read from the page image at 300 dpi. ↩

  37. EFTA00225044, p. 29 of 58, answering question A.5 on interactions with defence counsel. Printed in the clear on the image: “Jack Goldberger’s office and met with him and Mike Tein (Guy Lewis’ law partner) about the victim list”; “I had a couple of telephone conversations with Lilly Ann Sanchez and Guy Lewis at the start of the investigation”; “I had telephone conversations later during the investigation with Lilly Ann Sanchez, Gerry Lefcourt, Roy Black, and Nate Dershowitz about subpoena responses.”; “I had numerous calls with Roy Black and Jack Goldberger about breaches of the NPA.”; “USA Acosta had contact with Ken Starr, Jay Lefkowitz, Gerry Lefcourt, and Alan Dershowitz.” The government participants named in the same sentences, including the First Assistant and the Criminal Chief, are blacked out, as are the individuals said to have been on the calls. Read from the page image at 200 dpi. ↩ ↩2

  38. Page 29 of the statement in its second copy, EFTA00225378, p. 134 of 294 (page stamp EFTA00225511), footed “Page 29 of 58”. This copy prints “Jeff Sloman and/or Andy Lourie was on some of these”, where the standalone prints “Jeff” and then a black box, followed by two more boxes. This copy covers with black boxes the name “Acosta” at both places the standalone prints it, in “Messrs. Acosta” and in “USA Acosta had contact with Ken Starr, Jay Lefkowitz, Gerry Lefcourt, and Alan Dershowitz”, and it covers the abbreviation “FAUSA” and the word “Chief” in the two sentences that follow. The defence-counsel names listed in the body text above are printed on both copies. Nothing on this page is taken from its extraction. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩

  39. EFTA00225044, p. 55 of 58, lettered item i of the C.1 catalogue: “After the Addendum was signed, USA Acosta wrote in the 12/19/2007 letter to Lilly Ann Sanchez that he had ‘considered defense counsel arguments regarding the Section 2255 portions of the Agreement…’” Cited here for the treatment of the U.S. Attorney’s name on the image. “USA Acosta” is printed on this page five times, in lettered items g.iv (twice), h, i and k. Read from the page image at 200 dpi and re-read at 400 dpi. ↩

  40. Page 55 of the statement in its second copy, EFTA00225378, p. 160 of 294 (page stamp EFTA00225537), footed “Page 55 of 58”. The five places where the standalone prints “USA Acosta” — in lettered items g.iv (twice), h, i and k of the C.1 catalogue — are covered by black boxes on this copy; the box in item g.iv also covers the words “FAUSA” and “and” that the standalone prints around the first of them. The quotation from the 12/19/2007 letter to Lilly Ann Sanchez in item i is printed identically on both copies apart from that name. Nothing on this page is taken from its extraction. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩

  41. Page 58 of the statement in its second copy, EFTA00225378, p. 163 of 294 (page stamp EFTA00225540), footed “Page 58 of 58”. The five places where the standalone prints “USA Acosta” are covered by black boxes on this copy: “so I could not say that [black box] decision was illegal”; “[black box] decision that the CVRA was limited to notice of federal proceedings was illegal”; “the reasons why [black box] did not take an aggressive stance”; “After the NPA was signed, [black box] recommended that I transfer to the Civil Division”; “Despite [black box] recommendation”. The two sentences quoted in the body text of this page from the standalone copy of page 58 are printed identically here. The closing block differs as well: measured on the 400 dpi render it is a single rectangle 830 px wide and 263 px deep, about three and a half text lines at this sheet’s 76 px line pitch, and it covers the position at which the standalone leaves the characters “s/” standing outside its box. Nothing on this page is taken from its extraction. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩

  42. EFTA00225014, p. 1 of 11, Data Set 9. Caption: “UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT / SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA / FGJ 07-103(WPB) / U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks / IN RE: GRAND JURY PROCEEDINGS / SEALED APPLICATION FOR PERMISSION TO DISCLOSE GRAND JURY MATERIAL AND FOR ENTRY OF A PROTECTIVE ORDER”. Opening line: “I, AUSA A. [black box], an attorney for the government as defined by Rule 1(b)(1)(B) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure hereby applies to the Court for an order authorizing: the disclosure of matters occurring before the grand jury to attorney Jonathan Biran of the firm Baker Donelson to allow him to fulfill his obligations in representing the undersigned in connection with an investigation conducted by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility”. scripts/who_filed.py reports no caption, docket line or signature block on this page; the caption above is the run’s own heading and the document bears no clerk’s stamp. Quoted from the corpus text layer, which agrees with the p. 2 image on the wording carried over. ↩ ↩2

  43. EFTA00225025, p. 1 of 13, Data Set 9. Same caption as the first-person version. Opening line: “COMES NOW THE UNITED STATES, by and through the undersigned Assistant United States Attorney, an attorney for the government as defined by Rule 1(b)(1)(B) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and applies to the Court for an order authorizing: the disclosure of matters occurring before the grand jury to attorney Jonathan Biran of the firm Baker Donelson to allow him to fulfill his obligations in representing Assistant United States Attorney [black box] ([black box] Villafaña) in connection with an investigation conducted by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility”. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2

  44. EFTA00225014, p. 2 of 11. Numbered paragraph 3: “In 2007, over my objection, the U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) elected to enter into a Non-Prosecution Agreement (NPA) with Jeffrey Epstein, which allowed him to avoid federal prosecution by: (a) pleading guilty to two state charges, (b) registering as a sex offender, and (c) paying civil damages as a substitute for restitution to the victims identified during the federal investigation. Also, over my objection, the USAO decided to enter into this NPA without first conferring with those victims.” Paragraph 6: “After Epstein unsuccessfully pursued his claims as high as the Deputy Attorney General, over my objection, the USAO still allowed Epstein the benefits of the NPA.”; “Over my objection, the USAO did not provide written notification of the state court plea proceeding in advance of the change of plea.” Each of the four occurrences of “over my objection” on this page carries a yellow highlight on the produced image. Paragraph 4 lists Epstein’s arguments, including “(c) members of the USAO (including me) had engaged in prosecutorial misconduct; and (d) the FBI had engaged in investigative misconduct.” Footnote 1: “Early subpoenas were issued on behalf of Federal Grand Jury No. 05-02 (WPB). That grand jury expired before the investigation was completed, so the matter was transferred to FGJ 07-103.” Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩

  45. EFTA00225025, p. 2 of 13. Numbered paragraph 3: “In 2007, the U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) elected to enter into a Non-Prosecution Agreement (NPA) with Jeffrey Epstein, which allowed him to avoid federal prosecution by: (a) pleading guilty to two state charges, (b) registering as a sex offender, and (c) paying civil damages as a substitute for restitution to the victims identified during the federal investigation. The USAO also decided to enter into this NPA without first conferring with those victims.” Paragraph 4: “After signing the NPA, Epstein delayed performing its terms, and began raising arguments to various officials within the Justice Department challenging both the legality of the NPA and the validity of the investigation.” The phrase “over my objection” does not appear in paragraphs 3 to 6 on this page, and no text on the page is highlighted. Footnote 1 is identical to the first-person version’s. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩

  46. EFTA00225025, p. 12 of 13, under the heading “CONCURRENCE REGARDING THE FILING OF THIS MOTION”, numbered paragraphs 26 to 29, quoted in the body text. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩

  47. EFTA00225025, p. 13 of 13 (page stamp EFTA00225037). Beneath “Respectfully submitted,” the printed block “ARIANA FAJARDO ORSHAN / UNITED STATES ATTORNEY”; to the left, “Dated: May ________, 2019” with the space between “May” and the comma left blank; to the right, “By:” followed by a printed rule with no writing above it, and beneath the rule a solid black box over the printed name. Measured on the 400 dpi render: the box runs 709 px deep against a 75 px text-line pitch taken from the “ARIANA FAJARDO ORSHAN” and “UNITED STATES ATTORNEY” baselines on the same sheet, so nine and a half text lines. It does not cover the name cleanly: in the 12-pixel band immediately above its upper edge there are 728 pixels darker than 128/255, which at magnification resolve as the tops of printed capitals standing above the bar. Nothing is taken from it here. The head of the same sheet carries the tail of the CONCLUSION begun on p. 12, numbered item 3: “an Order sealing this Application and the accompanying Orders.” Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩

  48. EFTA00225014, p. 7 of 11, numbered paragraph 17: “After I provided the materials to OPR, Mr. Biran and I received communications from an attorney at OPR stating that she believed that I had improperly disclosed material covered by Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(e) to Mr. Biran. This was due, in part, from her mistaken belief that I had provided to Mr. Biran the Timeline, the Exhibit List, and the Exhibits.” Quoted from the corpus text layer; this page was not rendered. ↩

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