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Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 293-1 Filed 05/25/21 Page 5/7 of 349 he is comfortable before proceeding.” Menchel told Villafafia he had “trouble understanding” why she was in a “rush” “given how long this case has been pending.” “4 OPR questioned Lourie, Menchel, Sloman, and Acosta about the timeline for reviewing the prosecution memorandum and the proposed charges. Acosta and Menchel believed Villafafia’s timeline was unrealistic from the start. Acosta told OPR that Villafafia was “very hard charging,” but her timeline for filing charges in the case was “really, really fast.” Menchel described Villafafia as “out over her skis a little bit” and “ahead of” Acosta in terms of his analysis of the case.* Menchel said it was clear to him that Acosta “was going to be the one making the call” about whether to go forward with charges, and Acosta needed more time to make a decision. Menchel told OPR, “This [was] not a case [we were] going to review in two weeks and make a decision on.” Sloman told OPR that although he did not conduct a “granular review” of the proposed charges, he believed Menchel and Lourie had done so and “obviously” had concluded that “the facts and the law didn’t suggest that the right thing to do was to automatically indict.” Lourie told OPR that he believed “the case was moving ahead.” Villafafia continued to seek direction from her managers. On May 15, 2007, she emailed Sloman, noting that “[i]t seemed from our discussion yesterday that pestering Alex [Acosta] will not do any good. Am I right about that?” Sloman responded, “Yes.” On May 21, 2007, three weeks after submitting the prosecution memorandum, Villafafia emailed Sloman and Menchel asking for “a sense of the direction where we are headed-1.e., approval of an indictment something like the current draft, a complaint to allow for pre-indictment negotiations, an indictment drastically different from the current draft?” Sloman responded only, “Taken care of.”*° D. Defense Counsel Seek a Meeting with Senior USAO Managers, which Villafatia Opposes Meanwhile, Epstein’s defense counsel continued to seek additional information about the federal investigation and a meeting with senior USAO managers, including Acosta. In a May 10, 2007 email to Menchel, Lourie reported that Epstein’s attorneys “want me to tell them the statutes a Villafafia explained to OPR that the “rush” related to her concern that Epstein was continuing to abuse girls: “Tn terms of the issue of why the hurry, because child sex offenders don’t stop until they’re behind bars. That was our time concern.” Menchel, however, told OPR that he did not recall Villafafia offering this explanation to him. OPR notes that in their respective statements to OPR and in their comments on OPR’s draft report, Menchel and Villafafia expressed contradictory accounts or interpretations of certain events. When it was necessary for OPR to resolve those conflicts in order to reach its findings and conclusions, OPR considered the extensive documentary record and the testimony of other subjects and witnesses, to the extent available. aa Sloman similarly recalled that Menchel thought Villafafia was “ahead of where the office was internally” and that caused “discontent” between Villafafia and Menchel. Villafafia was not the only one, however, who was surprised that the indictment was not approved immediately. The case agent told OPR that it seemed “everything changed” after Villafafia submitted the prosecution memorandum, and the momentum towards an indictment abated. Villafafia’s immediate supervisor told OPR that from her perspective, it appeared “Miami didn’t want the case prosecuted.” However, Menchel rebuked Villafafia in his July 5, 2007 email to her for having “led the agents to believe that [filing charges in] this matter was a foregone conclusion.” 46 Sloman could not recall during his OPR interview what he meant by this remark, but he speculated that he had spoken to Menchel, and Menchel was going to take care of it. 30 DOJ-OGR-00004354