Document SA-116

Case 22-1426, Document 77, 06/29/2023, 3536038, Page118 of 258 SA-116 Case 1:20-cr-00330-AJN Document 204-3 Filed 04/16/21 Page 116 of 348 However, as with Villafaña's publicly released emails to Lefkowitz, this meeting between Acosta and Lefkowitz drew criticism when the media learned of it during the CVRA litigation. It was seen either as further evidence of the USAO's willingness to meet with Epstein's attorneys while simultaneously ignoring the victims, or as a meeting at which Acosta made secret agreements with the defense. Two letters written later in 2007 refer to the breakfast meeting. In a December 2007 letter to Sanchez, Acosta stated that he had "sua sponte proposed the Addendum to Mr. Lefkowitz at an October meeting in Palm Beach . . . in an attempt to avoid what I foresaw would likely be a litigious selection process."139 In an October 23, 2007 letter from Lefkowitz to Acosta, less than two weeks after the breakfast meeting, Lefkowitz represented that during the meeting, Acosta assured me that [the USAO] would not intervene with the State Attorney's Office regarding this matter; or contact any of the identified individuals, potential witnesses, or potential civil claimants and their respective counsel in this matter; and that neither [the USAO] nor the [FBI] would intervene regarding the sentence Mr. Epstein receives pursuant to a plea with the State, so long as the sentence does not violate state law.140 However, two days after receiving this letter, Acosta revised a response letter drafted by Sloman, adding the term "inaccurate" to describe Lefkowitz's claims that Acosta had promised not to intervene with the State Attorney's Office, contact individual witnesses or claimants, or intervene regarding Epstein's sentence.141 The draft response stated, "[S]uch a promise equates to the imposition of a gag order. Our Office cannot and will not agree to this."142 Acosta told OPR that he did not remember the breakfast meeting, but he speculated that the meeting may have been prompted by defense complaints that Villafaña had recommended "her boyfriend's partner" to serve as attorney representative.143 Acosta said that "the way this was reported [in the press] was that I negotiated [the NPA] over breakfast," which was inaccurate because the NPA had been signed weeks before the breakfast meeting.144 When asked about 139 In fact, Sloman and Lefkowitz had been working on language for the Addendum before Acosta's breakfast meeting with Lefkowitz. It is possible that Acosta was not aware of Sloman's efforts or had forgotten about them when writing the December 7, 2007 letter. 140 This letter is discussed further in the following section of this Report. 141 OPR did not find evidence establishing that the response was ever sent. 142 Sloman's initial draft response referred to a conversation the previous day in which Acosta had "clarified" Lefkowitz's claims about what Acosta had purportedly said at the October 12, 2007 breakfast meeting. 143 As noted previously, the attorney whom Villafaña recommended was a friend of another AUSA whom Villafaña was then dating, but had no professional relationship with either Villafaña or the other AUSA. 144 For example, the Miami Herald's November 2018 investigative report stated that "on the morning of the breakfast meeting, a deal was struck—an extraordinary plea agreement that would conceal the full extent of Epstein's crimes and the number of people involved. . . . [T]he deal—called a non-prosecution agreement—essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe . . . " Julie K. Brown, "Perversion of Justice: How a future Trump cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime," Miami Herald, Nov. 28, 2018. The NPA, however, was finalized and signed 90 DOJ-OGR-00021290