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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

v.

JEFFREY EPSTEIN,

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New York, N.Y.

19 Cr. 490 (RMB)

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Defendant.

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Conference

July 8, 2019
1:20 p.m.

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Before:

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HON. HENRY B. PITMAN,

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Magistrate Judge

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APPEARANCES

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GEOFFREY S. BERMAN
United States Attorney for the
Southern District of New York

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BY:

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Assistant United States Attorneys

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STEPTOE & JOHNSON, LLP
Attorneys for Defendant
BY: REID H. WEINGARTEN

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MARTIN G. WEINBERG
Attorney for Defendant

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MARC FERNICH
Attorney for Defendant

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Also Present:

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Special Agent FBI
Detective NYPD

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SOUTHERN DISTRICT REPORTERS, P.C.

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THE DEPUTY CLERK: Counsel, please state your name for the record.

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MR. : Good afternoon, your Honor. For the

government,

With us are Special Agent of the F.B.I. and

Detective NYPD task force officer.

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THE COURT: Okay.

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MR. WEINGARTEN: Good afternoon, your Honor. For Jeffrey Epstein, Reid Weingarten from the law firm of Steptoe &

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MR. WEINBERG: Good afternoon, your Honor. Martin Weinberg. I'm an attorney from Boston, Massachusetts; and, with your Honor's permission, I will be filing a pro hac vice to represent Mr. Epstein.

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THE COURT: Okay.

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MR. FERNICH: Good afternoon, your Honor. Marc Fernich, New York, New York, also for Mr. Epstein.

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THE COURT: All right. I have spoken to Judge Berman. The matter has been referred to me for the initial appearance, arraignment, and bail.

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Mr. Epstein, my name is Magistrate Judge Pitman. The 23 purpose of this proceeding is to inform you of certain rights that you have, to inform you of the charges against you, to consider whether counsel should be appointed for you, and to

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decide under what conditions, if any, you should be released. Can I have the date and time of arrest, please? MR. : Yes, your Honor. The defendant was arrested on Saturday, July 6, at approximately 5:30 p.m.

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Mr. Epstein, you have the right to remain silent. You are not required to make any statements. Even if you have made any statements to the authorities, you need not make any further statements. Anything you do say can be used against

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You have the right to be released, either conditionally or unconditionally, pending trial unless I find that there are no conditions or combination of conditions that would reasonably assure your presence in court and the safety

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You have the right to be represented by counsel during all court proceedings, including this one, and during all questioning by the authorities. If you cannot afford an attorney, I will appoint one to represent you.

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It is my understanding that you are being represented by retained counsel. I want to advise you that the right to the appointment of counsel is an ongoing right that you possess throughout these proceedings. If at any time you are unable to continue with retained counsel for financial reasons, you can apply to the court at any time for the appointment of counsel.

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Do you understand that?

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THE DEFENDANT: Yes, your Honor. THE COURT: Mr. Epstein, you are charged in an

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indictment in two counts.

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Count One charges you with a sex trafficking conspiracy in violation of Title 18 United States Code § 371.

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Count Two charges with you with the substantive offense of sex trafficking in violation of Title 18 United States Code § 1591.

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Mr. Weingarten, are you going to be lead counsel here

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MR. WEINGARTEN: Yes, your Honor.

THE COURT: Mr. Weingarten, have you received a copy

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MR. WEINGARTEN: Yes, your Honor. THE COURT: Have you reviewed it with your client? MR. WEINGARTEN: Yes, your Honor. THE COURT: Do you waive its reading? MR. WEINGARTEN: Yes, your Honor. THE COURT: Mr. Epstein, how do you plead? THE DEFENDANT: Not guilty, your Honor.

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THE COURT: Because the defendant has been indicted, there will be no preliminary hearing, and that takes us to the question of bail. In that regard, I have received the Pretrial Services report. I have also received a letter from the

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government dated July 8, 2019. I take it all counsel have the same documents? MR. WEINGARTEN: Yes, your Honor. THE COURT: I will hear from the government first, and then I will hear from defense counsel. MR. Yes, your Honor. The government intends to seek detention, and I am happy to explain the reasons why. Would the court prefer that I speak from the table or from the podium? THE COURT: Whatever your pleasure is. MR. : Your Honor, the defendant poses an extraordinary risk of flight and danger presented by him. Given the charges and the characteristics of the defendant, he simply cannot reasonably be expected to appear in court if he is granted bail. Accordingly, the government joins the recommendation of Pretrial Services that the defendant be detained pending trial for a number of reasons. Starting with the conduct alleged, the defendant is charged with trafficking minors for sex acts, as the court explained, in violation of 18 United States Code $ 591, and is charged with a count of conspiracy to traffic minors for sex acts in violation of 18 U.S.C. 371. In particular, the indictment charges that the 24 defendant engaged in a years-long scheme to sexually abuse underage girls, paying minor girls to themselves be abused, and

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also paying certain victims to recruit other girls to be subject to the defendant's sexual abuse.

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The indictment alleges that the defendant undertook this conduct at at least two locations, including his mansion in Manhattan and his estate in Palm Beach, Florida. In both locations, victims were initially recruited to provide massages to the defendant, which would be performed nude or partially nude, would become increasingly sexual in nature, and would typically include one or more sex acts, including These victims, who were often particularly vulnerable, were as young as 14, and the defendant knew he was abusing underage girls. The indictment further alleges that the defendant perpetrated these crimes by working with others, including employees and associates who facilitated these abusive encounters.

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Regarding the defendant himself, your Honor, he is extraordinarily wealthy, mobile, and unattached to the Southern District of New York. He maintains at least six residences in the United States and abroad, including the ownership of a private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands and a residence in Paris, France. Among other things, the defendant owns two private jets and routinely uses them to travel abroad. He is a man of nearly infinite means, your Honor; and, as set forth in our submission, he has tremendous incentives to use those means to flee prosecution.

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The government notes as an initial matter that this is a presumption case because sex trafficking is charged; and, moreover, each of the four factors to be considered in the detention analysis strongly militates towards pretrial

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So starting with the nature and seriousness of the offense, as previously discussed, the nature and circumstances of the crime are the most serious crime that this court sees. The defendant is alleged to have spent years sexually abusing minors in multiple locations and with dozens of victims.

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The seriousness of the charge is also reflected in the potential penalties, which include up to 45 combined years of incarceration on Counts One and Two, and the likelihood of a substantial period of incarceration is supported by the fact that the government's evidence is strong. There are multiple individual identified victims in the indictment, numerous specified overt acts, and dozens of overall victims alleged.

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In order to protect the privacy of the victims, your Honor, I'm not going to go into detail about particular victims, but we can say that information provided by victims has been detailed, it has been credible, and it has been corroborated by other witnesses and contemporaneous documents and records, including from a recent search of the defendant's Manhattan mansion, as I will discuss further in a moment.

Separately, your Honor, in just the last 36 hours,

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that is, post charge, we have been contacted by multiple attorneys and several additional individuals who have identified themselves as victims and are interested in speaking with the government, none of whom the government has previously

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Your Honor, the defendant is 66 years old. He is charged with appalling crimes, and those charges are supported by significant evidence, including victim and witness testimony and damning record evidence. He faces the very real prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison. He has every motivation in the world to flee, and he has the means to do it.

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And I will note for the court that this is a case where the government has really put its money where its mouth is on the risk of flight. This district took extraordinary efforts to maintain the covert status of its investigation for many months due to the risk of flight of the defendant - not a single media report, not a single public statement, no appeals for victims to come forward because of precisely the flight risks we are discussing now.

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Turning to the characteristics of the defendant, your Honor, some individuals who face significant charges lack the means to flee. Not this defendant. As set forth in the government's submission, in the defendant's most recent sex offender registration, he lists six residences worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, including a residence abroad.

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The defendant has refused to answer any questions about his income or assets for the Pretrial Services report, so the scope of his wealth and his assets remains entirely concealed to the government and to the court. But the defendant certainly has access to endless means to flee, including two private jets. He has no meaningful family ties, and any argument that his properties would keep him in the United States ignores his ability to simply leave those properties behind in favor of moving beyond the reach of U.S. authorities to live off his extensive wealth abroad, extensive wealth, I should add, that the court doesn't even have any accounting of. He travels abroad extensively, has a residence in France, and all of those factors further contribute to the

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With respect to danger and obstruction, again, this is a presumption case, and not only is the defendant charged with the sexual abuse of minors, he has previously pled guilty to solicitation of an underage girl. This court knows that defendants are routinely detained in this district when facing such charges and that this is not an unusual position for the

It is further concerning that there are credible allegations from the prior investigation that the defendant or his agents engaged in witness tampering and harassment, and in fact there is evidence that he was contemplating pleading

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guilty to that kind of offense in Florida. Those allegations include verbal harassment, evasion of legal process, and forcing off the road the father of an individual relevant to that investigation.

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THE COURT: Can you elaborate on that last point about forcing somebody off the road?

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MR. : Your Honor, what we have is the record evidence from an underlying civil dispute in Florida that discusses this incident and discusses it in the context of a potential plea of the defendant to obstruction or harassment charges. The government sets before this court that if the defendant was willing to undertake such measure simply as a result of an investigation, the potential for dangerous and obstructive activity in an indicted case is alarming and very

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Despite having been previously convicted of a sex offense involving an underage victim and being a registered sex offender, the defendant has continued to maintain a vast trove of lewd photography of young-looking women or girls at his mansion. Your Honor, pursuant to judicially authorized warrants, law enforcement agents searched his home on Saturday and found at least hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of sexually suggestive photographs of nude females, many of whom appear to

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I also want to note that the search revealed specific

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evidence from his home consistent with victim accounts. Even the room where the abuse occurred, your Honor, the massage room, was still set up in the same way it was 15 years ago, with a massage table and sex paraphernalia.

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And with respect to the photographs

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THE COURT: When you say the evidence was consistent with victim accounts, is it limited to the massage table and massage room or is there something else?

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MR. : Descriptions of the massage room and

the massage table, that's correct, your Honor.

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THE COURT: Okay. All right.

MR. With respect to the photographs, your Honor, some of those were found in a locked safe which also held electronic disks with labels that included the words "Young Miscellaneous Nudes 1" and "Girl Pics Nude."

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Your Honor, this is not an individual who has left his past behind. He is a continuing danger to the community and an extraordinary risk of flight and, for those reasons, the government joins the pretrial recommendation that the defendant be detained pending trial.

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THE COURT: All right. Thank you.

Mr. Weingarten.

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MR. WEINGARTEN: Thank you, your Honor. I will use the podium, if that's okay.

THE COURT: That's fine.

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MR. WEINGARTEN: So your Honor, I would like to start by providing some context, and then I'm going to make a suggestion as to how we proceed.

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The beginning here is 2005 in Florida. That's when an allegation was received by the local police that Mr. Epstein was engaged in sexual conduct for money, prostitution. Thereafter, there was a very sophisticated three-year investigation by law enforcement, including locals and feds, into Mr. Epstein's conduct. Numerous girls were interviewed, employees were interviewed, and it is fair to say that a significant segment of the law enforcement community in Florida thought what we had in hand was simple prostitution. There was no coercion. There were no threats. There was no violence. And it is also fair to say that a significant portion of the law enforcement community in Florida believed that a local misdemeanor was the appropriate sanction.

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Now, it is also

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THE COURT: Did you represent Mr. Epstein in the Florida investigation?

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MR. WEINGARTEN: No, but I'm familiar with the

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THE COURT: All right.

MR. WEINGARTEN: It is also true that there was a contrary view largely taken by the feds, and what ensued was a complex set of discussions and negotiations and finally an

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agreement, an agreement that was consummated and agreed to all the way up to main justice at a very, very high level.

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The agreement involved a plea in state court to soliciting an underaged girl, which would require registration, compensation paid to alleged victims, and an NPA from the feds, in other words, a declination by the federal government, an agreement that was approved all the way up in main justice and it sure seemed like a global solution at the time to everyone involved, including my client.

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What happened since then? Mr. Epstein continued a life of success, generosity, creativity and, more important, a law-abiding life from 2008 forward. How do we know? Because when you are in registration the way he is, every single night his whereabouts are known. There is constant reporting, constant monitoring, and absolutely, to our knowledge, no complaints by anybody from that moment forward about his conduct until we have arrived in court here.

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Now, what has happened in court from that moment? There have been lawsuits, many of them ludicrous, dismissed out of hand. But when something like this happens, a lot of stuff comes out of the woodwork, and there were lawsuits that Mr. Epstein settled also in the normal course.

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There was one particular litigation that leads to this occasion, and that is, under the Crime Victims Rights Act, that act simply says that victims have a right to be consulted by

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the United States, and there are alleged victims in this case who complain that they were not, and there has been extensive litigation in the Southern District of Florida before Judge Marra on that very subject. In fact, the judge concluded that the prosecutors from the Southern District of Florida did not adequately notify some of the victims about the ongoing discussions and the consummation of the deal and, in particular, the NPA. The United States took the position that they had no responsibility to do so, that they had treated the victims properly, and that matter continues to this day.

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The consequences of that matter are overwhelming, because the judge suggested, I think three times, that the NPA, the declination, could be voided. And we think about that for a second. So a defendant negotiates what he thinks is a global solution with the feds. He does his time --

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THE COURT: Does the nonprosecution agreement in Florida the nonprosecution agreements in the Southern District routinely say they are limited to the Southern District of New York.

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MR. WEINGARTEN: Obviously

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THE COURT: Is there a similar provision in the

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MR. WEINGARTEN: I don't want to misstate. It is not before me. It is obviously going to be an important part of the pretrial motions. What is for sure is that there was

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the negotiation with the Southern District included negotiations with main justice. What's also true is the investigation extended into the Southern District of New York and elsewhere in terms of girls being interviewed.

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So obviously your question is relevant and will be part of the pretrial litigation for sure. But what matters. here and for now is there certainly was a belief that there was a global solution based upon the facts on the ground.

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THE COURT: Have you seen the Florida nonprosecution

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Yes. MR. WEINGARTEN: I don't have it before me. I don't want to make a specific representation and not be completely

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MR. WEINGARTEN: The consequences of this are huge in that if in fact there is a negotiation with a defendant, the defendant does his time, the defendant pays his victim, and the defendant spends ten years on the registration list and prosecutors don't adequately notify the victims, how in the world can that deal be undone? Every prosecutor in the world has to oppose that possibility. No defense attorney in their right mind would negotiate a deal with that potential

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So this is a huge problem for the department and what solution ensues, and I suggest the solution that ensued is this indictment. To us, this indictment is essentially a do-over. The allegations are from 2002 to 2005. This is old stuff. This is ancient stuff. This is the very stuff that was investigated by the feds in Florida, a sophisticated three-year investigation. Two of the alleged victims in this indictment are from Florida. The indictment here tracks the conduct that was investigated in Florida back before the agreement was reached. Obviously we need to get discovery to find out just how inextricably linked the investigation back in Florida is with what's going on here. We do know we are talking about ancient conduct. We do know we are talking about facts that are from 2002 to 2005, facts that were known to the United States prosecutors before they entered into the NPA, the declination. This is essentially a redo. That's how it feels to us. And if we are correct, that should chill the blood of every defense attorney who negotiates a deal with the United

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States.

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In addition, we have -- the central allegation here is trafficking, and obviously it is useful and relevant to make inquiry as to why the trafficking law was passed. It is to 23 cover abhorrent conduct, where young girls are kidnapped, they are fooled, they are forced to come usually to unfamiliar 25 places, work in brothels where they service 15, 20 guys in a

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day. They can't leave or else their families are threatened.

This is dreadful conduct.



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I remember an occasion when the Attorney General Eric Holder and I think Director Comey had a press conference establishing this as a law enforcement priority. Every sensible person in the world would think that this is the exact right thing law enforcement should do.



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This is not this case. There was no violence. There was no coercion. There was no intimidation. There is no deception. The bottom line, if you take a fair look at the facts of this case as alleged and in the record, you may come to the conclusion there was prostitution involved and maybe a lot of it, but that doesn't mean that the person involved is a pedophile, a rapist or, heaven knows, a trafficker. Just --

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THE COURT: Well, if the women involved were under 18,

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MR. WEINGARTEN: My understanding THE COURT: Legally they are incapable of consent, are

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MR. WEINGARTEN: Well, it could be statutory rape. But what I am talking about is trafficking and why the statute was passed, and obviously the statute was passed to protect women from the horrors that occur in such settings, and that is light years removed to what happened in this case. So what about bond? I would suggest that the

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traditional issues that we look at, the issues involved, let's start with that, we believe we have extremely powerful motions relating to the government seeking two bites at the apple and for due process reasons, double jeopardy reasons, we don't think that will stand. We also think fundamentally what's at issue here is not trafficking. That's not why the statute was

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The risk to others, what we have here is at least ten years post incarceration in the State of Florida of conduct. that has never been challenged by anyone until now. The registration requirements are onerous. He is under constant surveillance. Law enforcement knows, if they choose to look, exactly where he is at any time.

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The risk of flight, what is true is from the moment of Judge Marra's litigation in the Southern District of Florida, the defendant knew that there would be challenges to the NPA. From 2013 on, there were representations made in court that that challenge was ongoing, and the defendant never sought to flee, never anticipated a time when he would flee, continued to live his law-abiding life. So the risk of flight, I think, is dramatically overstated in the government's presentation.

I think the traditional remedies that the court finds appropriate in case after case a large cash bond; passport -- relinquished; waiving extradition; a bracelet on%;B some form of supervision that is adequate to guarantee his appearance, it

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will be child's play to find that; bonds from other people, surety bonds from other people.

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Because we have not had an opportunity to see our client until today and because we have just received the government's submission, what we would like to do is have the opportunity to sit down and put together a bail package, a coherent bail package in writing and provide it to the court.

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I would point out on the obstruction allegation -- THE COURT: Let me ask you this -- sorry to interrupt you do you want to adjourn the detention hearing? Under the -- statute, you have up to three days.

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MR. WEINGARTEN: What I would like is to have until the end of the week to provide something in writing, a specific recommendation in writing.

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THE COURT: So you want to adjourn a determination of

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MR. WEINGARTEN: Yes.

THE COURT: Is there any objection to that from the government? The defendant is detained in the interim under

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MR. WEINGARTEN: Right.

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Your Honor, we certainly don't object if the defendant is consenting to detention with leave to make a further application.

I think the government would like at least a brief

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opportunity to respond to some of those points, to the extent that the defense is arguing that Mr. Epstein should be granted bail as a general matter and the court is going to consider

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THE COURT: Well, the court always considers the parties' arguments.

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But let me just come back to Mr. Weingarten for a minute. Mr. Weingarten, under the Bail Reform Act you are entitled to a continuance of three days, which I guess would take us to Thursday.

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MR. WEINGARTEN: Right.

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THE COURT: The other alternative, I guess, if you want to de facto extend that three days is consent to detention without prejudice.

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MR. WEINGARTEN: We estimated that by Thursday we could get you something in writing and then appear back before you at your convenience.

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THE COURT: Okay. Do you want to schedule it well, I think Thursday's proceedings right now would be in front of Judge Berman unless he wants to send it back to me for bail, 21 but do you want to put this down for detention hearing on

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MR. WEINGARTEN: Can I make one point that I don't want to forget that I think is extremely important?

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THE COURT: Go ahead.

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MR. WEINGARTEN: The last thing we did today was refuse to answer questions. What we said at Pretrial is heaven forbid we make a mistake, and in terms of assets, we wanted to be precise. So there was no refusal. There was a request for time to supplement. That was accepted. And that's part of the reason we want to sit down and make sure we get our information correct to provide to the court.

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THE COURT: All right.

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MR. WEINGARTEN: Can I make one other point? THE COURT: Sure.

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MR. WEINGARTEN: In terms of the obstruction, I think it is such a significant part of our argument that the conduct at issue is ancient. It is from 2002 to 2005. So obviously if the defendant is a threat to obstruct justice, the court needs to take that into account. The allegations raised -- and I just read them briefly because we just got the government's letter relate to negotiations between the feds and the -- defendant. Back when the Southern District of Florida was attempting to find an appropriate remedy, there were discussions going back and forth: Can we squeeze you into this statute? And it didn't work, and it didn't work because there is no factual basis. That is the reference to the alleged obstruction. Not obstructive acts. Instead, the feds in Florida agreed to the plea to the state offense because there was no appropriate statute that covered conduct that was

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proveable. That is the answer to the obstruction issue.

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THE COURT: All right. So you want to adjourn the detention hearing until Thursday? MR. WEINGARTEN: Yes.

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THE COURT: All right. Is there any objection to that from the government? I think under the statute he is entitled to three days.

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: That is, of course, fine, your Honor. I think we would like just a very brief opportunity to respond to some of those arguments so that they don't sort of hang with the court for three days unresponded to.

8 MR.

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THE COURT: All right. Go ahead.

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MR. Just very briefly, your Honor, I think a lot of that discussion was entirely orthogonal to the

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15 issues here.

But just very briefly, with respect to the charges here, there is simply no force required for underage victims. A grand jury has properly returned an indictment, and these are fact issues that are being presented in large part.

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Certainly the concept of child prostitution is, frankly, offensive and not recognized in federal law. The idea that children can consent to sex and be prostitutes is beyond the realm of federal law which contemplates trafficking, which is what has been charged here. Mr. Weingarten is free to argue to a jury that trafficking minors was only statutory rape or

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that those victims weren't treated as badly as the parade of horribles he has in mind. But for now the question is whether the defendant's attendance can be assured.

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And with respect to the nonprosecution agreement THE COURT: I'm not sure I would refer to something as only statutory rape. The use of the word "only" before "statutory rape" I'm not sure sits well. But go ahead.

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B And I agree, your Honor.

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With respect to the actual substance, the Southern District of Florida has represented in public filings that the nonprosecution agreement was limited to the Southern District of Florida, and we can litigate that in a motion to dismiss, but it is simply not relevant here.

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With respect to the statute of limitations, Mr. Weingarten says that the conduct is old. He did not say that that it is beyond the statute of limitations because it is

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And, finally, it is not the same conduct. Some of the conduct overlaps. Some of the conduct does not. And in particular, one of the two counts of the indictment is predicated exclusively on New York victims.

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So for all of those reasons, we just ask the court to consider those responses as it awaits the defendant's filings

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MR. WEINGARTEN: Can I just make one point to clarify?

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THE COURT: Go ahead.

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MR. WEINGARTEN: On the statutory rape thing, I had a senior moment. There is no statutory rape because there is no penetration, and that is the answer to that question.

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THE COURT: All right.

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We will set this down for a detention hearing on Thursday, July 11, for the continuation of the detention hearing. Thursday, July 11, at 2 p.m.

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The defendant is detained at least until the continuation of the detention hearing pursuant to 18 United States Code 3142 (f).

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I have been advised by Judge Berman that he wants to see counsel right after these proceedings. Judge Berman's courtroom is 17B. So counsel and Mr. Epstein should go to 17B.

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All right. Anything else from the government? MR. : Your Honor, ordinarily we would ask to exclude speedy trial time, but I think because we are going directly to Judge Berman, we have no such application.

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THE COURT: Mr. Weingarten, anything else? MR. WEINGARTEN: No, thank you, your Honor. THE COURT: Mr. Weingarten, anything else? THE COURT: All right. Thank you all.

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oOo

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SOUTHERN DISTRICT REPORTERS, P.C.