Kirkland & Ellis attorneys request DOJ Deputy AG review of federal prosecution pressure on Jeffrey Epstein, citing alleged DOJ manipulation and tie...

Kenneth W. Starr Joe D. Whitley Kirkland & Ellis LLP Alston & Bird LLP 777 South Figueroa Street The Atlantic Building Los Angeles, CA 90017-5800 950 F Street, NW Phone: 213-680-8440 Washington, DC 20004-1404 Alt. Phone: 310-506-4621 Ph: 202-756-3189 Fax: 213-680-8500 Fax: 202-654-4889 kstarr@kirkland.com joe.whitley@alston.com May 27, 2008 VIA FACSIMILE (202) 514-0467 CONFIDENTIAL Honorable Mark Filip Office of the Deputy Attorney General United States Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20530 Dear Judge Filip: This letter briefly supplements our prior submission to you dated May 19, 2008. In that communication, we urgently requested that your Office conduct an independent review of the proposed federal prosecution of our client, Jeffrey Epstein. The dual reasons for our request that you review this matter are (i) the bedrock need for integrity in the enforcement of federal criminal laws, and (ii) the profound questions raised by the unprecedented extension of federal law by the United States Attorney’s Office in Miami (the “USAO”) to a prominent public figure who has close ties to former President Clinton. The need for review is now all the more exigent. On Monday, May 19, 2008, First Assistant Jeffrey Sloman of the USAO responded to an email from Jay Lefkowitz informing U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta that we would be seeking your Office’s review. Mr. Sloman’s letter, which imposed a deadline of June 2, 2008 to comply with all the terms of the current Non- Prosecution Agreement (the “Agreement”), plus new unilateral modifications, on pain of being deemed in breach of that Agreement, appears to have been deliberately designed to deprive us of an adequate opportunity to seek your Office’s review in this matter. The USAO’s desire to foreclose a complete review is understandable, given that the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (“CEOS”) has already determined that our substantive arguments regarding why a federal prosecution of Mr. Epstein is not warranted were “compelling.” However, in contradiction to Mr. Sloman’s assertion that CEOS had provided an independent, de novo review, CEOS made clear that it did not do so. Indeed, CEOS declined to examine several of the more troubling aspects of the investigation of Mr. Epstein, including the deliberate leak to the New York Times of numerous highly confidential aspects of the investigation and negotiations between the parties as well as the recent crop of civil lawsuits filed against Mr. Epstein by Mr. Sloman’s former law partner. The unnecessary and arbitrarily imposed deadline set by the USAO was done without any respect for the normal functioning and scheduling of state judicial matters. It requires that Mr. Epstein’s counsel persuade the State Attorney of Palm Beach to issue a criminal information HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_025704