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Case 1:20-cr-00330-AJN Document120 Filed 01/25/21 Page 12 of 19 substantive crimes when the false declarations “concern the substantive offenses.” Potamitis, 739 F.2d at 791. Such cases typically involve situations where the defendant was aware that he was being investigated and either lied to the grand jury or made false statements to law enforcement officers in an effort to thwart the existing investigation into the other offenses with which he was charged. See, e.g., id. at 789-90 (joinder of perjury, false statements, and obstruction of justice counts proper where defendant made false statements to FBI agents and perjured himself in the grand jury); see also id. at 791 (collecting cases). Here, the circumstances are very different and joinder is not appropriate. The government does not allege that Ms. Maxwell lied to the grand jury or the FBI to derail its investigation into the conduct underlying the Mann Act Counts. Instead, it alleges that Ms. Maxwell made false statements in two depositions in an unrelated civil defamation action which occurred in April and July 2016. Moreover, although the government alleges that some of the questions posed at the depositions related to some of the alleged victims in this case (Indictment {4 2, 8), the questions were tangential to the defamation action, which was based on Ms. Maxwell’s denial of a purported conspiracy with Epstein from 1999-2002 involving Ms. Giuffre. The alleged false statements underlying the Perjury Counts therefore do not “concern” the Mann Act Counts and cannot be joined as part of a “common scheme or plan.” Potamitis, 739 F.2d at 791. The government makes only a half-hearted, and ineffective, attempt to allege a connection between the Perjury Counts and the Mann Act Counts sufficient to satisfy Rule 8(a). Paragraph 2 of the Indictment alleges: [I]n an effort to conceal her crimes, MAXWELL repeatedly lied when questioned about her conduct, including in relation to some of the minor victims described herein, when providing testimony under oath in 2016. DOJ-OGR-00002290