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KIRKLAND & ELLIS LLP 18 U.S.C. § 2423(b), a statute enacted to prevent sex tourism, provides up to 30 years of imprisonment for anyone who travels across state lines (i) for the purpose of engaging in (ii) illicit sexual conduct with a minor. Neither of those elements is satisfied here. Mr. Epstein did not travel to Palm Beach for the purpose of engaging in sexual activity with a minor, within the meaning of the statute. The evidence is indisputable that Palm Beach was where Mr. Epstein spent most of his discretionary time, and that his travels to Palm Beach were merely trips returning often to his home of twenty years—not the escapades of a sex tourist off to some destination inextricably intertwined with the required significant or dominant purpose of that trip to be to have “illicit sexual conduct.” Epstein’s trips to Palm Beach were simply those of a businessperson traveling home for weekends or stopping over on his way to or from New York and St. Thomas or to visit his sick and dying mother in the hospital for months on end. He certainly did not travel to his home in Florida for the dominant purpose of engaging in sexual conduct with a person who he knew was under 18 when he did not know, at the time he decided to travel, from whom he was to receive a massage, if he were to receive one at all. In Cuellar, the unanimous Supreme Court linked the term “design” in the money- laundering statute to the terms “purpose” and “plan,” and stressed that those terms all required the defendant to “formulate a plan for; devise”; “[t]o create or contrive for a particular purpose or effect”; [carry out] “[a] plan or scheme”; or “to conceive and plan out in the mind.” Slip. op. at 12 (citing dictionary definitions). The same link is present here, and it simply cannot be said that Mr. Epstein’s design, plan, or purpose in traveling to Palm Beach was to engage in illicit sexual conduct with minors; his design or plan or purpose was simply to return to his home. Any construction of § 2423(b)’s “for the purpose of’ language to include purposes beyond the dominant purpose of the travel would run afoul of the rule of lenity and due process principles discussed earlier. Any attempted prosecution of Mr. Epstein under a more expansive construction of the “for the purpose of’ language would also violate the separation of powers doctrine. Congress, which selected the “for the purpose of’ language signaled no clear intention to make it a federal crime whenever an actor has engaged in illicit sexual conduct following his crossing of state lines as long as it might be said that sexual activity at his destination was among the activities he pursued there. Congress well knows how to write a statute in this field which eliminates a purpose requirement. See 18 U.S.C. § 2423(c)(“Any United States citizen or alien admitted for permanent residence who travels in foreign commerce, and engages in any illicit sexual conduct with another person ...”). § 2423(b) is not such a statute. Federal court decisions watering down the “for the purpose of “ requirement fly in the face of the two Supreme Court decisions addressing that element. See Hansen v. Huff, 291 U.S. 559 (1934); Mortensen v. United States, 322 U.S. 369 (1944). Santos and Cuellar speak loudly and clearly against prosecutors seeing such elasticity in federal criminal statutes, including those enacted to protect important federal interests. In cases involving the federalization of activity that is within the States’ historic police power, Congress must speak with particular clarity. See, e.g., Will v. Michigan Dep’t of State Police, 491 U.S. 58, 65 (1989). 12 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012153