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Case 22-1426, Document 77, 06/29/2023, 3536038, Page110 of 258
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Case 1:20-cr-00330-AJN Document 204-3 Filed 04/16/21 Page 108 of 348

At some point that day, Acosta spoke with Lefkowitz by phone regarding the need for Epstein to plead to a registrable offense. Throughout the weekend, with Villafaña’s Monday deadline looming, defense counsel pressed hard to eliminate the sexual offender requirement. On Saturday, September 22, 2007, Sanchez sent a series of emails to Lourie. In the first, she provided details from a press report about a Florida public official who the previous day had pled guilty to child sex abuse charges and was sentenced to a term of probation. She noted that she “spoke to [M]att [Menchel]” and asked Lourie to call her. Two hours later she sent Lourie a second, lengthy email, strongly objecting to the registration requirement, and outlining “all arguments against registration [as a sexual offender] in this case.” In this email, Sanchez claimed that there had been a “miscommunication” during the September 12, 2007 meeting, and that “we only agreed to the solicitation with minors because we believed and [Krischer] and [Belohlavek] confirmed it was NOT registrable.” Sanchez complained that lifetime sexual offender registration was a “life sentence” that was “uncalled for,” “does not make sense,” and was “inappropriate” to impose “simply [because] the FBI wants it, in return for all there [sic] efforts.” She listed numerous reasons why Epstein should not have to register, including his lack of a prior record or history of sexual offenses; the lack of any danger of recidivism; the ease with which he could be “tracked” without registering; and that it would be “virtually impossible to comply” with four separate state registration requirements. A few minutes later, Sanchez sent Lefcourt’s phone number to Lourie “in case you want to speak to him directly.”

In another email sent less than two hours later, Sanchez told Lourie she was writing again because “you are a very fair person. This resolution in the Epstein case is not reasonable. [I]t is a result of a misunderstanding at a meeting.” She stated that Epstein’s attorneys had “consistently emphasized their goal of 18 months in a federal camp” and “[e]veryone knew that a registerable offense precluded a camp designation. Sanchez added, “Therefore it would have been wholly inconsistent with that primary goal of [Epstein’s] safety to lightly concede to registration at that meeting.” Sanchez concluded, “[I]mposing a life sentence on him is not something anyone will eventually be proud of. Please reconsider and help me get a fair result.”

Lourie responded to none of the Sanchez emails, but he did reach out to Acosta for a phone conversation. By email late that night, at 10:26 p.m., Lefkowitz asked Lourie to phone him.

The next day, Lefkowitz emailed Acosta—with copies to Sloman, Lourie, and Villafaña— to “follow up on our conversation Friday,” asking Acosta again to reconsider the requirement that Epstein plead to a registrable offense. Lefkowitz wrote that there had been a “misunderstanding” at the September 12, 2007 meeting:

Before the meeting, Mr. Krischer and Ms. Belohlavek, a sex prosecutor for 13 years, told us that solicitation of a minor . . . is not a registerable offense. However, as it turned out, [it] is a registerable offense and our discussion at the meeting was based on a mistaken assumption. We suggest that Mr. Epstein enter two pleas—one to the Indictment and a second to a non-registerable charge.

has offered to buy me a cup of coffee. I have had coffee with no one.” Krischer told OPR that the “reasons” to which he referred related to the pressure he had been getting from Chief Reiter about the Epstein case.

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