OUR FOCUS WAS ON WHERE to go from here. What would be the remedy for the violation? Our position was since the court had ruled that secretly signing the NPA behind the victims’ backs was a violation, then the NPA was an illegal agreement that should be declared null and void. If the agreement was invalid, then so was the immunity protection it provided. This would mean that Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators could be prosecuted for the Florida crimes committed many years ago.
Of course, the government did not agree with our proposed remedy, but the thought of it made Epstein very nervous. Sensing danger, he reached out to me again. He wanted to help settle the CVRA case in any way that would avoid the remedy of invalidation of the NPA that we were seeking. In early March 2019, Jeffrey and I began talking again, and meeting every so often at Starbucks.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Georgia needed to speak with all of Epstein’s victims again to get their view on what remedy they wanted to see for the violation of their rights. Epstein hated the fact that the government was now speaking directly with his victims, so he asked to formally participate in the case. As a result, we began working with the government and Epstein to set up a joint mediation. All the while, the government continued to interview victims. When he learned of the interviews through a statement made by the government in a pleading, he was annoyed, though he believed they were all related to the CVRA.
But at the same time, the U.S. attorneys from the Southern District of New York and the FBI had begun conducting interviews of their own, including interviews of my clients Courtney and Olivia. By coincidence, the CVRA was providing cover. While Jeffrey Epstein was worried about shutting down the CVRA case before we reversed his NPA and revitalized the possibility of a Florida prosecution, another investigation was building rapidly, and this time, it was Epstein who was in the dark.
Shortly after my clients and other victims were interviewed in the criminal investigation in March, I got a call from Julie Brown. She said she had a source that told her New York was investigating Epstein and that FBI agents were interviewing his victims. She needed me to be the second source so that she could report it. That would have destroyed the investigation and put many people in physical danger. I had to tell her that I had no idea what she was talking about and that any interviews being conducted were related to the CVRA. Whew, that was a close call.
It wasn’t long after that Jeffrey called me again. He wanted to meet at our Starbucks. We met in May 2019. He was different. Nervous. Pacing. He seemed almost paranoid. Did he know? I couldn’t tell, but he seemed frustrated by his inability to control the CVRA. We talked about ways of resolving things, but he equivocated, as usual, still unable to agree to all of my terms.
During the meeting, he went on an angry diatribe about Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz had just done an interview on The View and made comments essentially saying Epstein was guilty.
“This guy was my lawyer, and he’s talking about me like that?” he railed.
At one point, he got up from our outside table and walked to the end of the sidewalk with his phone to his ear. I could tell that he was yelling, but couldn’t make out what he was saying. He walked hurriedly back to the table and sat across from me.
He crossed his legs, leaned back, placed his phone on the lap of his gray sweatpants, and lowered his glasses. “I can be nice, but I can also be real mean,” he said referring to his call. “That was Alan. He’s going to stop talking.”
I have no idea whether he actually called Dershowitz or whether anyone was even on the other end of the line.
He looked right at me, “Brad, what is the end goal with the CVRA? Even if you win and the judge rules it’s invalid, there is no way they will prosecute me. This will go all the way up to the attorney general. You know Trump was my friend and Barr is his boy. Let’s end this CVRA thing and be done.”
Name-dropping was part of Epstein’s normal routine and I took everything he said with a grain of salt. He knew he could basically say whatever he wanted about his associations with powerful people and I had no real way to verify or disprove it.
Calming for a second, he thought out loud: “So what do you really want?”
“Courtney has been the driving force of the CVRA. She deserves to have her legacy preserved,” I explained.
He quickly retorted, “I’m not going to disagree with you. What does she want, though? What if I put up a building in her name? The Courtney Wild Center for Victims? What do you think? Would that do it?”
“Look, this isn’t just about her. This is about all of the victims. Courtney wants to help others and you know that.”
“Okay, Brad, so what’s fair? What if I give them all health insurance? For them and their families? Sound good?” he responded, growing antsy with my refusal to immediately agree with him.
While he did show interest in solving this problem of his, it wasn’t a real offer. It was just his normal creative pontification. He knew that I would have to share these ideas with Courtney and that she would get her hopes up. Just another move in the game that he was always playing.
We left without much further discussion other than an agreement to see if some alternative was possible to resolve the CVRA.
When we tried to set up a three-party mediation where the victims, the government, and Epstein would attend, Epstein backed out. Was he pulling the rug out at the last minute as a negotiating tactic, as he had done so many times before? Or had he suspected another investigation was under way and mediation might be a trap? Who knows.
We never spoke again.
In June 2019, while my son Austin and I were driving home from a day of fishing, a call came in—0000000000. I had always answered in the past. This time, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what he knew or what he might have suspected. My knowledge alone of the New York investigation would have been treated by him as the ultimate betrayal. Consequently, it would have subjected me to the full power of his wrath.
After staring at the number for several rings, deciding whether to answer, the ringing stopped.
I felt my heart beating fast. I called Brittany and Stan on a three-way call. “If something doesn’t happen soon, then it will never happen. I have this feeling he knows something. Or he is about to find out. And he will kill someone this time. Me. He will see me as the common denominator to his problems.”
Brittany jumped in, “You didn’t do this to him. He did this to himself.”
Stan quickly assured, “If truth be told, he should be mad at me, not you, Brad.”
“He won’t see it that way,” I explained recounting the details of the events that had unfolded over the past few months.
Shortly thereafter, we hung up.
Stan and I didn’t talk until I was on my Fourth of July family vacation in Naples, at a bowling alley, waiting out a sudden thunderstorm. After letting Stan go to voice mail at least four times, I answered to hear him say, “I just got a call from the FBI. He’s in handcuffs…”