DOJ-OGR-00021353.jpg

Case 22-1426, Document 77, 06/29/2023, 3536038, Page181 of 258
SA-179
Case 1:20-cr-00330-AJN Document 204-3 Filed 04/16/21 Page 179 of 348

In its review of the documentary record, OPR examined an email written by Villafaña in 2018, more than a decade after the NPA was negotiated, in which she suggested that the two-year sentence requirement in the initial “term sheet” provided to the defense was developed by Menchel as a favor to defense attorney Sanchez. OPR examined the facts surrounding this allegation and determined that there was no merit to it. Specifically, in December 2018, after the Miami Herald investigative report renewed public attention to the case, Villafaña recounted in an email to a supervisory AUSA, a conversation she recalled having had with Sloman about the case.225 In the email, Villafaña stated that she had not been a participant in discussions that led to Acosta’s decision to offer a two-year plea deal, but she added the following: “Months (or possibly years) later, I asked former First Assistant Jeff Sloman where the two-year figure came from. He said that Lily [sic] Ann Sanchez (attorney for Epstein) asked Mr. Menchel to ‘do her a solid’ and convince Mr. Acosta to offer two years.”

OPR questioned both Villafaña and Sloman about the purported “do her a solid” remark. Villafaña told OPR that she had been aware that Menchel and Sanchez were friends. During her OPR interview, Villafaña explained:

[A] lot later, I asked Jeff. I said, you know, “Jeff, where did this two years come from?” And he said, “Well, I always figured that . . . Lilly asked Matt to do her a solid,” which I thought was such a strange term, . . . “and to get her a good deal so that she would be in Epstein’s good graces” and that that’s where the two years came from. Although strangely enough, then several years after that, Jeff Sloman asked me where the two years came from, and I had to remind him of that conversation. So Jeff doesn’t know where the two years came from.

Because the email had been expressed in more definitive terms, OPR asked Villafaña whether Sloman had affirmatively asserted that the two-year deal was a favor from Menchel to defense counsel, or whether he had stated that he merely “figured” that was the case, but Villafaña could not recall precisely what Sloman had said. At a follow-up interview, Villafaña again said that she was unable to recall whether Sloman’s specific statement was “Lilly asked Matt to do her a solid, and he did it,” or “I always figured Matt just wanted . . . to do her a solid.” Villafaña stated that she was unaware of any information that “expressly [indicated] that there was any sort of exchange of . . . a favor in either direction.”

During his OPR interview, Sloman did not recall making such a remark, although he could not rule out the possibility that Villafaña, for whom he repeatedly expressed great respect, “heard that in some fashion.” He told OPR that if he did say something to Villafaña about Menchel having done “a solid” for Epstein’s counsel, he could not have meant it seriously, and he explained, “[I]t’s not something that I would have believed. Him doing her a solid. I mean that’s the furthest thing from my recollection or impression even after years later.”

225 Villafaña’s email stemmed from a congressional inquiry received by the Department concerning the Epstein investigation and the NPA, to which the USAO had been asked to assist in responding. In her email, Villafaña addressed several issues that she perceived to be the “three main questions” raised by the press coverage.

153
DOJ-OGR-00021353