EFTA00141710.pdf

Epstein Speaker Series Questions This was a very complicated investigation with numerous witnesses and lots of documentation, plus the FBI's ongoing investigation into the death. Describe some of the major challenges you faced in conducting the investigative work. to address. and I were not involved at the onset of this investigation. However, from what we can surmise, we believe the overall major challenge occurred at the start of the investigation, due to the extreme interest with both the press and the public, the high-profile nature of the case, and the desire to get answers as to what happened before those answers were available. Due to the high-profile nature of the investigation, the assigned AUSAs were involved with the initial interviews along with GIG and FBI special agents. Multiple interviews were being conducted by multiple people at the same time. There were a lot of people working the investigation in the beginning, and evidence was also being collected at the same time. Agents and AUSAs needed to communicate with one another about what was being learned during their interviews immediately after the interviews were conducted. However, oftentimes the interviewing agents wouldn't have the most current information during their respective interviews, because the information needed during those interviews was later learned to have been received when the simultaneous interviews were being conducted. Therefore, many people had to be interviewed twice, and sometimes three times, due to information flow and information discovery. In sum, there was a lot to do in what originally seemed like a short period of time, a lot of people gathering that information, and the information being learned wasn't always known by everyone involved at the time they needed to know it. In addition, the MCC was an active BOP facility that needed to keep its operation going. The people being interviewed were the people that needed to make that happen. So we had to balance the need to obtain the information with the need to keep the facility running. What were the initial challenges upon first being assigned this investi aa d to answer) to start. When I was first assigned, I was new to the OIG and still learning. The AUSAs were trying to set a trial date while I was trying to become familiar with the indictment and the basic information of the case. I recall being busy trying to review all the documents that needed to be turned over for the multiple FOIA requests that had come in. I was then advised that the Subject's were offered DPAs and the Subject interviews needed to occur ASAP and within a week or two. was brought in as a senior special agent to assist with processing the info and conducting the high-profile Subject interviews. Etc. and I had to quickly become familiar with the facts of the case and conduct these subject interviews. Tough part was that these two subjects were the first two people who found Epstein and they were never interviewed because of the prosecution and them being represented by defense attorneys. Going into the two primary subject interviews, no one knew exactly what transpired leading up to Epstein's death and in the first few minutes after Epstein was found. Even though we had the basic understanding of the investigation, we did not know all the ins and outs of everything that transpired on that day. We weren't sure if we would get the ability to interview them again, so we prepped as much as we could and we did both the interviews. We walked into the interviews with EFTA00141710 outlines of the topics we needed to discuss and questions we needed to ask. But the part that helped the most was always asking the who, what when, where, why to each statement made by the subjects. It helped us get a better understanding of everything that transpired and at the same time cover most of our bases so we did not have to go back for a second interview. By doing this we prepared ourselves to begin the long road of the 016 investigation into the custody, care and supervision of JE at MCC New York. to pick up. As mentioned, I was brought in when the DPA's were agreed upon to help conduct the two primary Subject interviews. I didn't know anything about case and the previous case agent had departed the OIG, so we didn't have a case agent to help and I get up to speed on the investigation. The case had been opened for approximately 2 years prior and there was a tremendous amount of documentation to go through and interview reports not only to read but to fully comprehend to be able to conduct appropriate comprehensive Subject interviews. While going through the material, we realized that we should either interview or re-interview a number of people prior to the subject interviews. So we were balancing the digestion of all of the case information along with preparing for and conducting a number or critical offsite interviews that had to be conducted in a very small window of time. Fortunately, we had a great team to help us prepare, consisting of the people on this discussion today. How did you decide what information to pursue vs. not? : That's the tough part, we did not know at that time what information wasn't pertinent. We started by reviewing the documents we felt were important like the count slips, round sheets, assignment rosters, and statements made by the BOP employees. We made a list of questions we needed answered and followed that path. We also conducted weekly meetings with our team and would discuss our findings and seek guidance and advice from one another. As you can imagine, every interview lead to additional leads, which could, and often did, multiple by approximately 3. That is, for every one interview we conducted, we found that we could interview an additional three people. We would then discuss the results of the interview and the suggested next steps with the team and jointly decide what to do next. How did you avoid dead-end rabbit holes? and • were amazialkeepirsthe investigation focused. As mentioned, every interview created more interviews. and M were great, both from investigative experience and legal knowledge, with keeping us focused on the most important avenues to go down. (Talk about the team.) How much frivolous information did you have to sort through? ( and to answer) EFTA00141711 : Initially when reviewing the case related documents, we felt like there was too much information for us to possibly go through and comprehend. We had thousands of pages of documents to review. While going through the material, we made a running list of items that we felt were important to review. We had digital copies of all the documents and evidence that was collected. We began creating folders and keeping track of documents we felt were important. We divvied up topics that each of us would review and the kept track of the documents that were important to each of those topics. If we didn't diwie up the work, then a lot of it would have been duplicated work. Yes, splitting up the material was key. And of course comprehending and then briefing the material was also crucial. Each of us had to know what the other was doing and what the other was learning. So after going through the material, we would circle back with one another and brief each other on what we learned. We made a lot of "notes" that we could use as cheat sheets. That helped us decide what was most important. What challenges did you face with interviewing witnesses? I to answer) After the two subject interviews we had to come up with a game plan on who we were going to interview. Started by reviewing all the FBI 302s and MOls that were done on the case back in 2019. Remember when I said these interviews were conducted by many different agents? The tough part about that was that a lot of times, follow up questions were not asked on certain topics or if someone made a statement in one interview, the interviewer for the next person did not know to follow up on that topic because the information as trivial. So, we decided we will re-interview everyone we thought was important to our investigation and we reviewed their previous statements with them and started finding that many of them started saying that is not what we said. So we had to clarify the information and also follow up on topics that were missed. One of the practices we did was asking the 5Ws on each of these interviews. This led to each these interviews lasting for hours. Thank God these interviews were now recorded because imagine taking notes on these interviews. But the tough part was that after the interview we had to get it transcribed and review them prior to moving on to the next set of interviews. We even started created summaries of everyones statements to it would be easier for us to review the statements rather than read through 100s of pages of transcribed interviews over and over. Now keep in mind, we are in 2021 and 2022, this is two years after Epstein's death. We are asking witnesses if they recall what they did on a specific date or incident. We wanted their independent recollection of events and didn't want to taint their recollections. We had to generally get their statements and by asking the 5Ws, most times they were independently able to recall events. We had some witnesses who were generally open with us because they felt they had nothing to worry about We had some witnesses that were holding back in fear what they say might possibly get them in trouble and we had to pry into the statements they made and review documents with them to EFTA00141712 get them to open up. Being prepared by reviewing the evidentiary documents and knowing the statements made by others helped in this case for us to follow up and ask the right questions so we knew when they were holding back. Then we had witnesses that were outright obstructive in the interview because he/she wanted to protect themself and/or other BOP employees because they felt that the government and BOP management was out to get them. We had lawyers and union reps in some of these interviews. Sometimes it was helpful because they helped clarify topics but other times it was struggle to interview the witnesses or subjects because the union reps would become obstructive. There were times where that we had to clarify to the unions reps what their role was in the interview and how they were not allowed to obstruct our investigation. The interviewees sometimes made hearsay statements. They claim to have heard that information from someone who heard it from someone else. We had to vet each and every information we received. We had to learn how MCC NY operated from the top to the bottom, including what each persons role consisted off and what their daily duties were, so that we could become familiar with if everyone did their job properly. For example, what notifications, reports, actions need to be taken if someone had to be placed on Suicide watch, what procedures need to followed if an inmate needed to be transferred to the SHU, etc. It was hard during the interviews when employees stated that it was not part of their job and it was another person's duties and we had to review all the BOP post orders and interview additional witnesses to understand what each person's duties were. We had to interview Epstein's family member which ended up resulting us receiving more conspiracy theories and this family member calling me over thirty times a day to get updates on status of the investigation. We had to try and interview lawyers and without going any further into that, you can guess how those interviews went. Almost every one of the interviews we did just brought up a ton more questions we needed to follow up on either by interviewing more people or having to review additional documents. BUT by preparing for each interview, creating questions and outlines and asking the 5Ws we did not have to go back and reinterview a majority of the subjects. There were some subjects we interviewed 2 or 3 times and each of them lasted hours. What challenges did you face with the amount of investigative material you collected such as schedules, emails, round count sheets, etc.? ( to answer) Going through all the material was actually extremely helpful and beneficial. We brought the MCC schedules, round sheets, count slips, important emails, and other documents with us to just about every interview. We then reviewed the documents with each person. When reviewing the documents, we were able to fill in the gaps and determine the inaccuracies with the various documents that one could never had learned by just reviewing the documents and taking them at face value. Using the documents during every interview allowed us to determine the inaccuracies within the documents and the false EFTA00141713 information that was ultimately determined to have been entered. The use of the documents also helped us to identify which individuals entered the false information, and shed light on other employee job failures. By becoming familiar with the multiple documents, we were able to cross reference the documents along with multiple interview statements and available video to learn what really transpired on the days under review. EFTA00141714