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96a Victims were not informed of, or consulted about, a potential state resolution or the NPA prior to its signing. The signing of the NPA did not immediately lead to Epstein’s guilty plea and incarceration, however. For the next nine months, Epstein deployed his extensive team of prominent attorneys to try to change the terms that his team had negotiated and he had approved, while simultaneously seeking to invalidate the entire NPA by persuading senior Department officials that there was no federal interest at issue and the matter should be left to the discretion of state law enforce- ment officials. Through repeated communications with the USAO and senior Department officials, defense counsel fought the government’s interpretation of the NPA’s terms. They also sought and obtained review by the Department’s Criminal Division and then the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, primarily on the issue of federal jurisdiction over what the defense insisted was “a quintessentially state matter.” After reviewing submissions by the defense and the USAO, on June 23, 2008, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General informed defense counsel that the Deputy Attorney General would not intervene in the matter. Only then did Epstein agree to fulfill his obligation under the NPA, and on June 30, 2008, he appeared in state court and pled guilty to the pending state indictment charging felony solicitation of prostitution and, pursuant to the NPA, to a criminal information charging him with procurement of minors to engage in prostitution. Upon the joint request of the defendant and the state prosecutor, and consistent with the NPA, the court immediately sentenced Epstein to consecu- tive terms of 12 months incarceration on the solicitation charge and 6 months’ incarceration on the procurement charge, followed by 12 months of community control. Epstein began serving the sentence that day, in a DOJ-OGR-00000159