Epstein's estate disputes there were 1,000+ victims
In a brewing courtroom clash, Epstein's estate — whose executor joined a MAGA lawyer's firm — disputes the "unsourced" stat in a Trump DOJ memo.
The Trump administration said there’s nothing more to reveal about Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes — in the same memo stating that he had more victims than ever previously reported.
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In a July memo, Donald Trump’s Justice Department and FBI refused to release any more information about Jeffrey Epstein and insisted that there was no basis for further investigation in the case.
The unsigned memo also cited an eye-popping and never-before-reported statistic: “Epstein harmed over one thousand victims.”
The executors of Epstein’s estate, attorney Darren Indyke and accountant Richard Kahn, took aim at the “unsourced and vague statistic” in a court filing on Tuesday, seeking to limit their potential civil liability for allegedly facilitating Epstein’s crimes.
“The page-and-a-half-long July 6 Memo contains no citations, identifies no documentary evidence or percipient witness as a source, names no author of its content, provides no factual basis for its representations, and does not explain what is meant by ‘harmed,’” the executors’ lawyer Daniel S. Ruzumna wrote in a four-page letter.
Comparing the memo to a “government press release,” Epstein’s executors ask a federal judge to reject the Trump Justice Department’s memo as unreliable.
The brewing legal fight could put the accuracy of the government’s Epstein investigation under a judge’s scrutiny. It also casts a spotlight on a lawsuit against two men once called the “indispensable captains of Epstein’s criminal enterprise,” one of whom is affiliated with a law firm tied to the Trump White House.
“Completely inconsistent with the record”
As growing numbers of victims have died or gone silent, the precise number of Epstein’s survivors may be unknowable, but the statistic is undoubtedly high.
Law enforcement officials compared Epstein’s sex trafficking operation to a pyramid scheme. Epstein would pay minors hundreds of dollars for massages that escalated into sexual assault and rape, then offer them more money to recruit other victims. One of his victims, Johanna Sjoberg, testified in a deposition that Epstein told her he needed “three orgasms a day.”
“It was biological, like eating,” Sjoberg said.
Sexual abuse allegations against Epstein date back to as early as 1985, but his sex trafficking conspiracy is commonly traced to the early 1990s. Virgin Islands investigators said that Epstein’s operation continued until at least 2018, a year before his federal prosecution and death. Some 225 Epstein survivors applied for compensation from the fund established by his estate, which deemed 150 eligible for payments. Dozens of lawsuits have also shown the reach of Epstein’s predation, which was global.
Last year, Epstein survivors filed a proposed class action lawsuit accusing Indyke and Kahn of facilitating, participating and concealing his sex trafficking scheme. Attorney Sigrid McCawley, who represents hundreds of victims, cited the Justice Department’s July memo as evidence that the “numerosity” requirement of a class action is easily satisfied.
But Indyke and Kahn’s lawyer says that the Trump Justice Department’s estimate is “completely inconsistent with the record before the court,” including the number of Epstein victims compensated as a result of recent class action lawsuits.
Two of those lawsuits against J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank for allegedly facilitating Epstein's crimes ended in settlements of $290 million and $75 million. Information about the class action members discovered as a result of that litigation is redacted in the executors’ letter.
“Valuable” experience
From 1995 until 2019, Indyke worked for Epstein, in a tenure that spanned Epstein’s multiple criminal investigations, prosecutions and death. Three years ago, Indyke got a new gig: joining the law firm of former Trump lawyer Tim Parlatore in 2022, according to The Atlantic.
Parlatore briefly defended Trump during then-Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the storage of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and Parlatore currently represents Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
In an interview with The Atlantic, Parlatore said that Indyke’s “experience on the legal side of the Epstein business was valuable,” citing skills like purchasing aircraft and structuring financial transactions.
Reporter Shane Harris noted in the article: “Those kinds of financial skills are what the two women who sued Indyke allege were at the heart of Epstein’s criminal enterprise.”
According to the lawsuit, Indyke and Kahn knew how their professional services for Epstein were being used. “Knowing that they would earn millions of dollars in exchange for facilitating Epstein’s sex abuse and trafficking, Indyke and Kahn chose money and power over following the law,” the complaint states.
The victims’ lawsuit follows similar litigation by the Virgin Islands government, which settled a separate case filed against Epstein’s estate, Indyke and Kahn for more than $105 million in 2022.
Indyke and Kahn’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Both men deny the allegations, and they have not been charged with crimes. The Epstein victims’ lawsuit against Indyke and Kahn is currently pending before U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, who recently presided over the trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Their dispute over the victim count could increase scrutiny into the investigative file that Trump’s Justice Department so far has refused to disclose.
Earlier this week, McCawley, the lawyer for Epstein’s victims, noted that the Justice Department attributed its statistic to an independent review of “300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence,” suggesting that the basis for that number could be found in the Epstein files.
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Great reporting Adam!
Sounds like the feds are doing everything they can to prevent the court from finding the names of Epstein’s clients.