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Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 293-1 Filed 05/25/21 Page 182 of 349 accept the two-year proposal when it was made, but instead continued to press for a sentence of home confinement, suggesting that the defense had not requested the two-year term as a favor and did not view it as such. The defense had previously rejected the state’s offer of a sentence of probation, and there is no indication in the contemporaneous records that Epstein viewed any jail sentence favorably and certainly that did not appear to be the view of the defense team in the early stages of the negotiations. As discussed below, after extensive questioning of the subjects about the basis for the two- year offer, and a thorough review of the documentary record, OPR was unable to determine the reasoning underlying the decision to offer two years as the term of incarceration, as opposed to any other term of years. Nonetheless, OPR concludes from the evidence that Acosta was aware of and approved the initial offer to the defense, which included the two-year term of incarceration. The only evidence suggesting that the offer of two years stemmed from an improper motivation of Menchel’s was a single second-hand statement in an email drafted many years later. Sloman, the purported declarant, told OPR that he could not recall whether he made the statement, but he firmly disputed that the email accurately reflected either the reason for the two-year proposal or his understanding of that reason. Villafafia herself could remember little about the critical conversation with Sloman, including whether she had recorded accurately what Sloman had said. Given the lack of any corroborating evidence, and the evidence showing Epstein’s vigorous resistance to the proposal, OPR concludes that there is no evidence to support the statement in Villafafia’s 2018 email that Menchel had extended a two-year plea deal as a favor to one of Epstein’s attorneys. E. The Evidence Does Not Establish That the Subjects’ Meetings with Defense Counsel Were Improper Benefits to Epstein OPR considered whether decisions by Acosta, Sloman, Menchel, and Lourie to meet with defense counsel while possible charges were under consideration or during the period after the NPA was signed and before Epstein entered his state guilty pleas evidenced improper favoritism toward or the provision of an improper benefit to the Epstein defense team. 1. The Evidence Shows That the Subjects’ Decisions to Meet with Epstein’s Legal Team Were Warranted by Strategic Considerations Although pre-indictment negotiations are typical in white-collar criminal cases involving financial crimes, witnesses told OPR that pre-charge meetings with defense counsel are infrequent in sex offense cases. As the lead prosecutor, Villafafia vehemently opposed meeting with Epstein’s attorneys and voiced her concerns to her supervisors, but was overruled by them. In Villafafia’s view, the significance of the early meetings granted to the defense team was that, but for those meetings, the USAO would not have offered the disposition set forth in the July 31, 2007 “term sheet” and, moreover, “that term sheet would never have been offered to anyone else.” OPR’s investigation established that while the defense attorneys persistently contacted the subjects through emails, correspondence, and phone calls, relatively few in-person meetings actually occurred with the USAO personnel involved in the matter. As shown in the chart on the following page, while the case was under federal investigation and before the NPA was signed, the subject supervisors and defense counsel had five substantive meetings about the case— 155 DOJ-OGR-00004479