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Extracted Text (OCR)
Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 293-1 Filed 05/25/21 Page 102 of 349
message, “That is fine. [The West Palm Beach manager] and I will nail everything down, we just
want to get a final blessing.”
Negotiations continued throughout the day on Wednesday, September 19, 2007, with
Villafafia and Lefkowitz exchanging emails regarding the factual proffer for a plea and the
scheduling of a meeting to finalize the plea agreement’s terms. During that exchange, Villafafia
made clear to Lefkowitz that the time for negotiating was reaching an end:
I hate to have to be firm about this, but we need to wrap this up by
Monday. I will not miss my [September 25 charging] date when this
has dragged on for several weeks already and then, if things fall
apart, be left in a less advantageous position than before the
negotiations. I have had an 82-page pros memo and 53-page
indictment sitting on the shelf since May to engage in these
negotiations. There has to be an ending date, and that date is
Monday.
Early that afternoon, Lourie—who was participating in the week’s negotiations from his
new post at the Department in Washington, D.C.—asked Villafafia to furnish him with the last
draft of the plea agreement she had sent to defense counsel, and she provided him with the “18/12
split” draft she had sent to Lefkowitz the prior afternoon. After reviewing that draft, Lourie told
Villafafia it was a “[g]ood job” but he questioned certain provisions, including whether the
USAO’s agreement to suspend the investigation and hold all legal process in abeyance should be
in the plea agreement. Villafafia told Lourie that she had added that paragraph at the “insistence”
of the defense, and opined, “I don’t think it hurts us.” Villafafia explained to OPR that she held
this view because “Alex and people above me had already made the decision that if the case was
resolved we weren’t going to get the computer equipment.”
At 3:44 p.m. that afternoon, Lefkowitz emailed a “redline” version of the federal plea
agreement showing his new revisions, and noted that he was “also working on a deferred [sic]
prosecution agreement because it may well be that we cannot reach agreement here.” The defense
redline version required Epstein to plead guilty to a federal information charging two misdemeanor
counts of attempt to intentionally harass a person to prevent testimony, the pending state
indictment charging solicitation of prostitution, and a state information charging one count of
coercing a person to become a prostitute, in violation of Florida Statute § 796.04 (without regard
to age). Neither of the proposed state offenses required sexual offender registration. Epstein
would serve an 18-month sentence and a concurrent 60 months on probation on the state charges.
The redline version again deleted the provisions relating to damages under 18 U.S.C. § 2255 and
replaced it with the provision requiring creation of a trust administered by the state court. It
retained language proposed by Villafafia, providing that the plea agreement “resolves the federal
criminal liability of the defendant and any co-conspirators in the Southern District of Florida
growing out of any criminal conduct by those persons known to the [USAO] as of the date of this
plea agreement,” but also re-inserted the provision promising not to prosecute Epstein’s assistants
and the statement prohibiting the USAO from requesting, initiating, or encouraging immigration
proceedings. It also included a provision stating the government’s agreement to forgo a
presentence investigation and a promise by the government to suspend the investigation and
withdraw all pending legal process.
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Document Details
| Filename | DOJ-OGR-00004399.jpg |
| File Size | 1148.5 KB |
| OCR Confidence | 95.0% |
| Has Readable Text | Yes |
| Text Length | 3,681 characters |
| Indexed | 2026-02-03 16:47:44.770834 |