Michael Szafranski, Rothstein’s financial advisor, was arrested and sentenced to two and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud, in addition to having to pay $6.5 million in restitution to the victims. The number of people who went down with that ship was high and the extent of their crimes was investigated in a no-stone-left-unturned manner for years. As the extent of the fraud and the number of people involved became more obvious, Epstein used each arrest as leverage to give credence to his suit against me. Remember, he alleged that I was Rothstein’s main conspirator.
As an interesting aside, Roger Stone was the lawyer in the office next to mine during my first few months at RRA. While he didn’t go to jail because of the RRA Ponzi scheme, and for the most part kept to himself, he was convicted in 2019 in connection with his work for President Donald Trump for allegedly communicating with Russian operatives. Their relationship dated back many decades, and he is apparently the first person to have encouraged Trump to run for president in 1998. It really is a small world.
SEVENTEEN ENTER JACK
AFTER AN ARTICLE ABOUT EPSTEIN’S lawsuit against me ran in the South Florida Sun Sentinel newspaper on December 10, 2009, I got a call from a local Palm Beach attorney named Jack Scarola, a trial lawyer I had known from his representation of other Epstein victims. As soon as he got on the phone, he declared in his deep, booming Shakespearean voice, “I see Epstein has published a fairy tale in hopes that it will intimidate you. It would be my distinct honor to represent you. Once we dismiss his action, I would enjoy nothing more than to prosecute the very valuable malicious prosecution case you will have against him and the lawyers that signed their name to that piece of paper. Do not get distracted.” I accepted his offer.
Epstein’s attack did not end with the lies that he spread in this public complaint where he cast me as the criminal mastermind behind the Ponzi scheme. A few days later, I was contacted by the Florida Bar informing me that Epstein had filed a bar complaint against me. I knew that Bruce Rogow had represented lawyers in bar actions, so once again I called him. He referred me to a lawyer in Palm Beach named G. Michael Keenan who was confident that the bar complaint would be dismissed. But Epstein’s tactics were annoying, to say the least. And expensive. Keenan’s legal fees were more than $20,000 when the complaint against me was indeed dismissed, which was just about $20,000 more than I had to my name at the time.
Epstein brought to bear the same massive resources against me as he had used against his victims. The time and money required to defend myself from a bad lawsuit was only part of his attack. He also immediately put my family and me under surveillance. Then he served subpoenas on the RRA trustee to obtain all my files related to him, including all the emails I had ever sent to anyone involving him while I had been working at RRA. And then there was the RRA bankruptcy case, which was a mess with nearly every lawyer in town seeming to play some part in it. There was no way to avoid this massive distraction.
Despite Jack’s offer to represent me, there were many pieces of the Epstein lawsuit against me that Jack couldn’t handle because he didn’t know the facts well enough. This forced me to personally appear in bankruptcy court, where the RRA fiasco was being handled, on a regular basis.
I should not have had much to worry about with Epstein’s transparently false lawsuit and harassing legal moves against me. Clearly, I had not made the molestation up as part of a Ponzi scheme. The fictional lawsuit he filed was nothing but a ploy to discover my privileged files, find out how I was pursuing him, and try to scare me out of doing my work. This seemed utterly obvious to me, my counsel, and everyone else. Everyone, that is, except the one person who mattered: the bankruptcy judge.
Judge Raymond Ray was being inundated on a daily basis with RRA-related litigation. He seemed to believe that anyone ever affiliated with RRA was already guilty. More of that supposition would raise its ugly head later, in a big way, but at the moment, what mattered was that he ordered RRA to turn over to my new law firm all the emails ever written to or from me or Scott Rothstein so that I could determine whether the communications in each email were privileged and therefore protected from disclosure to Epstein’s counsel. I reminded Judge Ray that to allow Epstein to subpoena all of my work product and attorney-client privileged information would be to turn the entire legal system on its head. Judge Ray directed me to start by reviewing every email before making arguments about why I thought each one was privileged.
Of course, all of the emails were privileged because every single one of them related to the cases I was pursuing against Epstein on behalf of Courtney, Lynn, and Marissa. Epstein knew this. Everyone in the courtroom knew this. The judge probably knew this, too, but he didn’t seem to care how time-consuming this project was going to be for me, at a time when I was trying to start a new firm and keep my investigation on track.
The next thing I knew, 27,500 pages of emails showed up at our law firm on a CD. When we realized the magnitude of this project, requiring us to individually analyze every single email, which would not only waste time but would also be expensive, we returned to the court and asked for help. The judge hired a special master, a former judge named Robert Carney. Carney seemed to be overly impressed by Epstein’s powerful legal team and to assume that anyone who had been accused by anyone else of being involved in the Ponzi scheme was guilty until proven innocent. This despite the fact that the only person throwing me into that category was a convicted criminal. Jeffrey Epstein was conducting an obviously contrived sideshow of smoke, mirrors, and shiny objects, but it was working.
We asked Judge Ray to have Epstein pay to print the 27,500 emails that were on the CD in order to have them delivered to our office for review. One of Epstein’s lawyers, Lilly Ann Sanchez, “offered” to have her law firm, Fowler White Burnett—a blue-chip Miami law firm with a hundred-year reputation—make the copies rather than cause Epstein to incur the expense of a third-party copying service. Carney liked that idea. “Are you kidding?” we asked. “You’re going to have Epstein’s attorneys, who are not allowed to see these documents before there is a determination about which are privileged, print the documents themselves?” Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse.
Despite the outrageousness of this screwball offer, and over our strong objection, Special Master Carney supported that process. He flatly told us that he would recommend it over our objection. In a vain effort to provide at least some protection against Epstein’s attorneys improperly keeping a copy of all these privileged materials, we drafted a very particular order allowing the court to keep jurisdiction to impose sanctions if Epstein’s attorneys retained any copies of the documents on the CD. The court entered the order, but we knew a piece of paper from a judge would never stop Epstein.
Special Master Carney then provided the CD to Epstein’s legal team at Fowler White. Epstein’s lawyers made hard copies of all 27,500 pages of documents and delivered them to me before allegedly returning the CD to Special Master Carney. This was supposed to ensure that Epstein’s counsel never accessed any of these documents.
My new law firm now had 27,500 pages to review and log, which cost us hundreds of hours of time and who knows how many thousands of dollars. This was exactly the distraction Epstein wanted. And, while running me around the track, he continued on a second front to relentlessly attack the girls he’d victimized, using his investigators to intimidate them. Nearly every day, while I was combing through stacks of old RRA emails, I was also getting calls from my clients saying that Epstein’s private investigators were harassing them. They were scared Epstein was coming to get them.
I knew Epstein was winning and I was losing. I just didn’t know how bad it was. That I would find out soon.
EIGHTEEN HOW THE FIGHT BECAME A WAR
BECAUSE THE RRA DEBACLE CAUSED me to lose momentum and time, I had to narrow my attack. Of the various depositions I served on witnesses but did not yet take before RRA dissolved, Ghislaine Maxwell was the most important. So I began working w
ith her lawyer to reset her deposition. Ghislaine was represented by Cohen & Gresser, the same New York law firm that represented Jeff’s brother, Mark Epstein, so I had good reason to think she and Jeffrey were still in close communication.
Ghislaine was still under the original subpoena that had set her deposition for late 2009, so she could not avoid it altogether, though her lawyers delayed setting a date by trying to establish all kinds of parameters, in particular a restriction on the questions that could be asked about her sexual relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Even though we didn’t agree to that term, we ultimately agreed on some level of confidentiality and set a deposition date. Once I locked that in for May 2010, I focused on securing a deposition of model scout Jean-Luc Brunel as well.
Both of these witnesses were soft spots in Jeffrey’s armor. I knew it and he knew it. Ghislaine had been around him for two decades, knew his secrets, and could not credibly deny all of them. Jean-Luc had a public reputation, documented by the BBC and CBS’s 60 Minutes, for engaging in sexually abusive conduct against young females of which Epstein was also accused and was still one of Epstein’s closest associates. Getting those two witnesses set did not stop us from continuing to pursue others.
As discovery continued in Courtney’s case, I took the deposition of Epstein’s butler Janusz Banasiak on February 16, 2010. This was the butler who was present at the Palm Beach house when the search warrant that led to Epstein’s arrest was executed in 2005. True to form, Banasiak showed up with an Epstein-paid lawyer, but he seemed decently honest about what he knew. Banasiak revealed that Jean-Luc Brunel had been staying at Epstein’s house the week prior to this deposition in February 2010. He also confirmed that Jean-Luc was still one of Epstein’s closest friends.
The next day was reserved for Jeffrey’s deposition. Epstein’s lawyers were successful arguing that his deposition should not be taken separately for every case against him, so there were seven lawyers slotted to ask him questions. I was first up. I arrived an hour early to set up and see how Epstein arrived. Who drove him? What car was he driving in?
Epstein arrived at his deposition in a black Suburban. It looked like the driver was Banasiak. Epstein stepped out in gray slippers, jeans, and a collared shirt turned up to cover his neck. He didn’t see me in my car parked at the other end of the lot. Jack Goldberger pulled in within seconds of Epstein arriving and they entered the building together. I got out of my car and walked quickly to take the elevator with them. Jack Goldberger said hello. Epstein did not. He just stared with his steely, squinty eyes and pursed his lips. It was a look I had not seen before but one I have seen many times since. His eyes lasered through me. Just before I was convinced that he was trying to kill me with his eyes, he lifted the left side of his lips to smirk, as if to convey that he controlled the temperature in the room.
I exited the elevator first and checked in before walking down to room 4—the largest room at the court reporter’s office, set up with a video camera at one end shooting down the table at the deponent’s chair with a blue screen background behind it. Along each side were six chairs, most of which would have been empty in a normal deposition, but today every chair would be occupied.
Other than the videographer, I was the first in the room. I set my briefcase on the table in front of the chair closest to where Epstein would be sitting and started unloading the documents that would be deposition exhibits. I stacked everything up in order alongside my yellow legal pads and six pens. One by one, the other plaintiff attorneys filed in, choosing chairs at the table, each with a stack of exhibits. By this point, all the other law firms representing victims expected me to take the lead.
Epstein’s legal team then came in, together, and sat on the opposite side of the table. He had five lawyers there that day. Once everyone was situated, Jack Goldberger walked in and took the last chair on the other side of the table, directly across from me. Epstein walked in behind him and took his seat at the head. He surveyed the room and grabbed one of the microphones to pin to his shirt. He looked at me, and I locked eyes with him.
He softened his look and said, “Janusz said you were nice to him. Thank you for that. I appreciate it.” Was this his way of trying to soften me up? That wasn’t going to happen.
As soon as he sat, the court reporter asked him to raise his hand as she swore him in—which in layman’s terms theoretically means the witness must tell the truth. A witness who is being asked questions about his criminal behavior has another choice, and that is to invoke his or her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The typical way to invoke is simple—the witness simply replies, “I invoke the Fifth.” But Epstein never did the typical.
And so we started.
“Mr. Epstein, how long have you been sexually attracted to underage minor females?” I began.
“Are you kidding?” he responded.
After objections and an invocation of his rights to remain silent, I rephrased. “Would you consider yourself addicted to sex with minor females?”
Rather than simply say, “I invoke the Fifth,” Epstein responded, “You know, Mr. Edwards, again, I want to be very respectful. As the current U.S. attorney has described your law firm as a criminal enterprise and part of one of the largest frauds in Florida’s history, it has been reported that your firm has fabricated multiple cases against me in order to fleece unsuspecting investors out of millions and millions of dollars, so unfortunately at this time, although I would like to answer that question, on advice of counsel I will have to refrain and assert my Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights.” He and his legal team had apparently decided to inject a nonresponsive and self-serving monologue in order to dilute the power of his invocation, and to irritate me.
I had designed the questions and physically positioned myself at the table in order to evoke as much body language from him as possible, since he was on video and I knew he wouldn’t provide much in the way of substance. While he continued to read through his script and assert a variety of constitutional rights to avoid answering, his facial expressions gave me some insight into his mind. While his prepared speech was frustrating, it was not something that would play well with the judge or a jury, especially once it could be shown that it was just more bluster to deflect from his guilt.
I asked him about his friend Jean-Luc Brunel. He looked at me as if he didn’t understand my question, then asked me to spell the name, implying that he had no idea who Brunel was. After I spelled it, he looked at the video camera again as if I had asked some crazy question about someone he had never heard of. I then said, “[Jean-Luc Brunel] was at your house last week, does that remind you?” He hadn’t realized that Banasiak had testified to that. With this question, he likely believed I had surveillance on him. He stared in a way that told me just how caught off guard he was. I asked again, “Are you acting like you don’t know him?” This time he reverted to his safety blanket and read from his script.
For the first time, he was off-balance. He knew I had done my research not only on his background but also on everyone he was associated with, to the point that I now knew who his houseguests were. Of course, I didn’t know half as much as he thought I did, but I made the most of what I did know. He looked disarmed and nervous about the information I had accumulated. During a break, all the other lawyers left the room. Epstein stayed. So, of course, I did, too. The only other person in the room was the court reporter.
We stared at each other, less than three feet apart, sizing one another up. It was uncomfortable. His gaze relaxed, though, and he tried to once again change tactics. “I like Lynn. I don’t like that she’s having to go through this,” he admitted. Lynn was someone whom he’d only known when she was between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, when she would go to his house to service him for sex or bring him other children to do the same. He liked her because she brought him so many girls, and because she liked him. And his way of trying to convince me that he was a good guy and not the blatant liar who was just caught on
tape pretending not to know who Jean-Luc Brunel was, was to tell me that he liked Lynn. This was his second big mistake that day.
Once the other lawyers filed back into the room and sat down, I resumed the questions. “Do you know [Lynn]?” He responded with a facial gesture into the camera to impress that he had no idea who she was, before reciting his scripted invocation.
“When we were in the room today, didn’t you look at me and say, ‘I like [Lynn]’?” I continued.
Despite the fact that only minutes had passed, he responded, “I don’t remember. I don’t know. Sorry,” as his lawyers were stunned and began objecting to the questions. They had not been in the room when Epstein casually made this admission to me. However, the court reporter, who had been there, could not believe Epstein would have the candid conversation she’d just heard, then get on the record and act like he had no idea what I was talking about. We asked her to sign an affidavit about the conversation and subsequent perjury. She did that. And she was ready to testify about Jeffrey perjuring himself.
I took her affidavit to the Palm Beach State Attorney’s office, which refused to take it on. I was told that Jeffrey Epstein was far too powerful to prosecute for something as petty as perjury. Apparently, only the powerless can get charged with lying under oath.
* * *
Less than a month later, Jeffrey was deposed in the case he’d filed against me personally, and he decided to try to get revenge by ramping up his attack on me and Lynn. Rather than making his already obnoxious Fifth Amendment invocations, he enhanced his creativity. In response to practically any question, he would incorporate his disparaging and false claims of my supposed involvement in the Rothstein Ponzi scheme into his answer, and now also dragged Lynn in, too. For example, when my lawyer, Jack Scarola, asked him why he was suing my client Lynn, he responded, “[Lynn] is part of a conspiracy with Scott Rothstein, Bradley Edwards, creating—excuse me—creating fraudulent cases of a sexually charged nature in which the U.S. attorney has already charged the firm of Rothstein, a firm of which Bradley Edwards is a partner, was a partner, with creating, fabricating malicious cases of a sexual nature, including cases with respect to me, specifically, in order to fleece unsuspecting investors in South Florida out of millions of dollars.” While this didn’t get him far, Epstein kept up with these antics for what I can only imagine to be his own amusement.
Relentless Pursuit Page 16
