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Case 22-1426, Document 77, 06/29/2023, 3536038, Page192 of 258
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Case 1:20-cr-00330-AJN Document 204-3 Filed 04/16/21 Page 190 of 348

OPR asked Villafaña about these emails and about the tenor of her interactions with Lefkowitz during the NPA negotiations and with other defense attorneys generally. Villafaña acknowledged that their tone was collegial and collaborative, and explained that generally, the tone of these emails reflected her personality and her commitment to complete the task her supervisors had assigned to her:

[I]f you were to pull all my e-mails on every case, you would find that that is how I communicate with people. I’m a Minnesota girl, and I prefer not to be confrontational until I have to be. And I can be when I need to be. But my instructions from my supervisors were to engage in these negotiations and to complete them. So I felt that given that task, the best way to complete them was to reach the agreement and, keeping in mind the terms that . . . our office had agreed to, and do that in a way that is civil. So . . . although my language in the kind of introductory or prefatory communications with Mr. Lefkowitz was casual and was friendly, when you look at the terms and when he would come back to me asking for changes, my response was always, “No, I will not make that change.”

Villafaña denied any intention to keep the victims uninformed about the NPA or to provide an improper benefit for Epstein, and she explained the context of the emails in question. The email in which Villafaña expressed reluctance to “highlight for the judge all of the other crimes and all of the other persons that we could charge” was written in response to a defense proposal to include in the federal plea agreement the parties were then considering a promise by the government not to prosecute Epstein’s assistants and other employees. Lefkowitz had proposed that the plea agreement state, “Epstein’s fulfilling the terms and conditions of the Agreement also precludes the initiation of any and all criminal charges which might otherwise in the future be brought against [four named female assistants] or any employee of [a specific Epstein-owned corporate entity] for any criminal charge that arises out of the ongoing federal investigation.” Villafaña told OPR that the USAO was not intending to charge Epstein’s assistants and was not aware of anyone else who could be charged, and thus did not oppose the request not to prosecute third parties. However, Villafaña was concerned that an overly detailed federal plea agreement would prompt the court to require the government to provide further information about the uncharged conduct, which might lead Epstein to claim the government breached the agreement by providing information to the court not directly connected to the charges to which he was pleading guilty. Villafaña was not the only one to express concern about how deeply a federal court might probe the facts, and whether such probing would interfere with the viability of a plea agreement. In an earlier email, Lourie had suggested charging Epstein by complaint to allow the USAO more flexibility in plea negotiations and avoid the problem that a court might not accept a plea to a conspiracy charge that required dismissal of numerous substantive counts.

As to Villafaña’s offer to meet with Lefkowitz “off campus” to resolve outstanding issues in the NPA negotiation, she explained to OPR that she believed a face-to-face meeting at a “neutral” location—with “all the necessary decision makers present or ‘on call’”— might facilitate completion of the negotiations, which had dragged on for some time.

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