This niche was unique. Consequently, I was bringing in a lot of cases. More than I could handle; especially while working on this Epstein mess.
During the spring of 2009, I was at the gym—where I went from five to six o’clock every morning—when I was approached by a lawyer I had litigated against named Russell Adler. He had a reputation for representing sexual abuse victims. Russell was running the trial division at a fast-growing Fort Lauderdale law firm called Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler (RRA).
Russell had recently won a $20 million case against a sexual predator, which naturally led to our conversation about the Jeffrey Epstein case and how much of my time it was consuming. I told him that the rest of my practice was starting to suffer. He wanted me to sit down with Scott Rothstein, the managing partner of his firm, to talk about what RRA could do for me to support my other cases while I continued to fight Epstein. There were more than fifty lawyers at RRA, many of whom were former judges, and on top of that, only the best lawyers around town were being recruited by that firm, or at least that was the impression he gave me.
Russell set up a meeting for me with Scott Rothstein in a steak house called Bova Prime located on the bottom floor of the huge skyscraper building in Fort Lauderdale where RRA maintained four floors of office space. The restaurant was owned by Rothstein himself. I wasn’t given much information about Scott or RRA before the meeting, only what Russell told me, which was that Scott had been one of the best young trial attorneys in the area of employment law before parlaying those wins into multiple lucrative business ventures. Scott owned properties throughout Fort Lauderdale, both residential and commercial, including the famous Versace Mansion in Miami. He was even part owner of a vodka brand.
I arrived at Bova Prime and told the hostess that I was there to see Scott Rothstein. She took me upstairs to the second floor, where no one was apparently permitted to go except for Scott. She sat me at a large round table overlooking the entire restaurant. I had never seen Scott before and had no idea what to expect. I figured that since he was a lawyer running one of the most powerful law firms in Fort Lauderdale, he would be an older guy with white hair and glasses, dressed traditionally in a business suit. I knew from his reputation that just about the entire city was completely enamored of him.
I heard a loud male voice and peered over the railing into the main dining area. From my angle I couldn’t get a good look, but from the sound of it, the man seemed to be greeting everyone like he was the mayor. I heard multiple people yelling out, “Scottyyyy,” and then the sound of high fives. “I have an important meeting. Gotta go, love ya,” the man yelled before walking up to the VIP area where I was sitting. He looked nothing like what I’d expected. He was in his forties, with spiky brown hair, wearing a bright purple suit and a massive watch covered in diamonds.
I didn’t know what he knew about me or what Russell had told him. He sat down in front of me and cocked his head to the left. I thought that he was doing it intentionally in an inquisitive way, but this was actually the result of a peculiar tic. One of his eyes would also blink at the same time his head would twitch.
While I was prepared to answer all of his questions, the interview lasted barely two minutes. The only thing he asked me was what I expected my role at the firm to be.
Before Scott gave me the chance to answer, he proclaimed, “Russell says you’re great. You’d better be. You’re hired.” He said not to worry about the salary because his law firm operated on the “system of fairness” and that if I made him money, he would treat me fairly. He quickly countered that with the statement that if I disappointed him, I’d have to see things his way and accept reduced pay. Sounded fair to me.
Before I could finish the conversation, he yelled over to the waitress to get him a martini, which she did. For a second, I thought that he was going to drink it right there, but then he got up, walked downstairs, and handed it to someone else, presumably to make them feel important. Scott was a master at making everyone around him feel important, and yet at the same time, everyone knew that no one was more important than Scott.
I called Russ and told him I was joining the firm, then took my paralegal, Shawn, to lunch at this little place called Mama Mia near our office in Hollywood. I told her we were going to join RRA. She was skeptical but agreed to come along. She believed in me. Prior to meeting me, she had worked for a big firm for twenty years. Even though she didn’t want to go back to a place like that, she said she’d do it for me. And I certainly didn’t want to go without her. I told her we had already been hired at RRA and that her meeting with the hiring staff there was merely a formality that she would have to go through before the first day of work.
That weekend, we loaded up more than sixty boxes of files and drove back and forth between our old office in Hollywood and our new office in downtown Fort Lauderdale. On Monday morning, we walked into the offices on the twelfth floor of RRA together. I remember noticing right from the beginning that everyone we saw seemed happy. It was a relaxed environment, with people talking in the hallways and sharing ideas. It reminded me a lot of the camaraderie I’d been a part of at the state attorney’s office. To me, this was refreshing.
Shawn went in for her “interview” with Scott’s assistant, Debra. I am sure Shawn asked more questions of Debra than Debra asked of Shawn. The truth was, Debra knew nothing about being a paralegal, and Shawn knew everything. By this point in her career, Shawn had even published a book about how to be a paralegal that was being used to teach students in law schools.
I expected Shawn to be as excited as I was when she came to my office after the interview. She shut the door and said, “I am so sorry, I told you I would go anywhere with you, but I will not stay here. It just doesn’t feel right. But call me when you leave, because you will, and I will come back and work for you.” She packed up her stuff right then and there and left the office without working one second at RRA.
I didn’t really have any time to think about losing Shawn. There was too much work to do and I needed to quickly get acclimated to this new law firm so that I could finally take advantage of all of its resources. I immediately told Russell that I wanted to put a team together to go after Jeffrey Epstein.
Russell followed through. Right after I started, I held a meeting in the main conference room where ten other lawyers and two investigators attended to listen to the factual and procedural history of the Epstein civil cases. I then laid out my plan of attack for putting us in the best position to win.
At this point, I had not yet seen Scott Rothstein in the office. He was talked about by everyone, not only in the office but all over town, as this larger-than-life super lawyer whom all of the richest people wanted to latch on to. He was rumored to travel only by private plane or helicopter, with a hand in every growing business, all while also running the most powerful law firm in town.
Later that week, though, Scott convened a firm-wide meeting in the large banquet room on the first floor of the building. More than one hundred lawyers and employees piled in and waited for him to arrive. Everyone was talking among themselves when all of a sudden, straight out of a movie, both doors swung open, slammed against the wall, and he entered like an NFL linebacker at the Super Bowl. There was no introduction, no pleasantries; he just started yelling at the top of his lungs.
“Every law firm,” he said, “practices law the same way. One firm files a motion, another firm files a motion. Someone files a complaint, another firm files an answer. That is not how we practice at RRA. When someone files a motion, I want you to chop their motherf***ing heads off. We are going to take over this town. We are going to change the way people practice law. I want everyone to be entrepreneurial. Anyone who comes to me with ideas about how to take over this place is going to be rewarded. Now everyone go and tear heads off.”
He slammed his hand down on the table before skipping out of the room. As barbaric as it sounds, on some level I left feeling excited to work for this guy. The scene reminded me of my high
school football locker room. Clownish as he may have been, Scott knew how to perform, organize, and most of all motivate.
Scott’s energy was off the charts. With the resources of RRA, I was inspired to assemble an unbeatable team to do as Scott had just ordered—take off Epstein’s head.
ELEVEN THE TWO OF US
KNOWING YOUR OPPONENT IS THE key to winning. When I later found a 2003 Vanity Fair article called “The Talented Mr. Epstein,” in which Jeffrey was quoted saying to reporter Vicky Ward, “Let’s play chess. You be white. You get the first move,” I knew that I was getting ready to play one hell of a chess game.
During my senior year of college, my roommate brought home a chessboard. He had played his entire life, and I’d never played before. In the beginning, I got killed. Game after game, no matter who I played, I lost. It’s so easy to concentrate only on trying to capture your opponent’s king when you first learn the objective. You forget that you have to make sure that your own king is protected before trying to attack. I still remember when I won my first game. It gave me the confidence to think that I finally understood the bigger picture. It really wasn’t long before I was beating everyone. Not all of the time, but most of the time. The game was captivating, forcing my mind to think through layers of actions and reactions.
When I went to law school at Florida State University, I started going up against better players, including people who were on the university chess team. While studying abroad one summer in the Czech Republic, I bought a hand-carved chess set that I took everywhere (and still play on to this day). For a long time, I was infatuated with trying different openings, different combinations, different attack methods, and yet no matter how comfortable I got, there was always someone who knew exactly how to counter me. I realized that the infinite complexity of symbiotic move combinations didn’t allow for anyone to ever solve the game completely.
That piece by Vicky Ward also made it seem as if Epstein believed there was some chivalry in combat. Ward even quoted Epstein’s longtime multibillionaire friend Les Wexner to that effect. Wexner offered some insight into his friend’s combative style: “Many times people confuse winning and losing,” Wexner said. “Jeffrey has the unusual quality of knowing when he is winning. Whether in conversations or negotiations, he always stands back and lets the other person determine the style and manner of the conversation or negotiation. And then he responds in their style. Jeffrey sees it in chivalrous terms. He does not pick a fight, but if there is a fight, he will let you choose your weapon.”
I had read Ward’s article and the few others about Epstein that were available at that point so many times that I had memorized them—they were the only game footage I had of my opponent. To beat him, I had to understand him. I needed to be able to predict his tendencies, his offensive and defensive strategies. There was no comparison when lining up his resources against mine; he was the heavy favorite. Preparation, toughness, resilience, and a perfect balance of offense and defense could overcome the disparity. At least that’s what I thought.
Unfortunately for me, until I got to RRA, my mentality just wasn’t realistic. Epstein had so many pieces on his chessboard and so many resources that he could basically just make up the game as he went along. It wasn’t until I had RRA’s resources that I could finally sit at the table and start to trade moves with him. Now I would have to meet him personally to understand any more.
* * *
In April 2009, I took Jeffrey Epstein’s deposition for the first time. Because I was now working at a big firm, and this was perceived to be an important case, another RRA lawyer went with me to the deposition—former Palm Beach Circuit Court judge Bill Berger. Berger had recently left the bench. He told me that he had been skeptical when Russell first told him the allegations against Epstein. After hearing my initial presentation at the firm, he quickly changed his mind. He felt it was important to show at this first deposition that our firm was not going to be outmanned by Epstein’s arsenal of attorneys. I didn’t care one way or the other if anyone went with me, and I didn’t really know Bill, but the car ride there gave me a chance to talk out loud about what we might expect.
Typically, in cases like this where the evidence is strong that the defendant committed what amounts to criminal acts, there is a high likelihood that he will invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination rather than actually answer questions.
Up until this point, Epstein’s written discovery responses had contained primarily Fifth Amendment invocations with few nuggets of substantive information. He did provide the names of certain employees who had worked at his Palm Beach mansion for a period of time that included the years during which Courtney, Lynn, and Marissa were abused. In the beginning of this case, it seemed whichever lawyer was steering that ship still cared about compliance with the rules, at least on the face of things.
Not knowing whether Epstein was going to answer questions or not, I spent two whole days preparing for the deposition. Very little preparation would be necessary if he wasn’t going to answer, but on the off chance that he did, I had to be ready. This was also the first time I would be meeting him in person, and I figured that he had underestimated me, so this might be my only chance to catch him off guard.
After all, who was I? There were many other Epstein victims who were represented by prominent local lawyers like Bob Josefsberg, a nationally recognized Harvard-educated lawyer and one of the most successful attorneys in Florida, and Jack Scarola, who was a respected lawyer in Palm Beach, where the cases were venued. Me? I was thirty-three years old and totally unknown on paper, except of course for my “Victim’s Petition for Enforcement of Crime Victims’ Rights Act,” where I’d hand-scribbled the word Emergency at the top. I saw this as a big advantage for me because I could fly under the radar.
I knew from the publicly available information on Jeffrey Epstein at that point that he was always prepared, and that he studied his opponents with the same meticulous attention to detail that I did. His preferred style of engagement—rope-a-dope—was also very similar to mine. I felt like this gave me tremendous insight into who he was and what potential vulnerabilities he might have.
What I had learned so far was that he approached every situation in the way most likely to disarm his opponent. On the one hand, he was always more prepared, yet on the other hand, he knew not to let his ego get in the way of a victory. By that, I mean he did not make an effort to overshare information in order to impress the others in the room. He, like me, cared only about the end result, and if that meant giving the false impression that everyone else was smarter than him or knew more than him, then that is exactly what he would do. He was intellectually dangerous.
I walked into that deposition with my game plan intact—I wanted to make Jeffrey Epstein believe that I was unprepared. The deposition was being held in a fancy all-glass office building with restrictive front desk security that required permission to access the elevators. Fully expecting to get off the elevator and walk down the hallway to Epstein’s lawyer’s office, I was casually talking to Bill about whether Epstein was even going to appear when the elevator doors opened up onto the second floor. I did not have one foot out of the elevator before Jeffrey Epstein appeared alone, standing three feet in front of me with his hand fully extended, saying, “Hi, Brad. Nice to meet you. I’m Jeffrey.” He totally caught me off guard. In our first chess match, Epstein had put me in check.
Everything he did was calculated. He wasn’t just saying hi. He put me in a position where I had no choice but to shake his hand the way I would to begin a professional or friendly relationship. The last thing on this earth I ever wanted to do was be his friend. I wanted to hate him. I wanted to disarm him and start this relationship on my terms. Instead, we started it on his.
Epstein looked me right in the eyes. He gave me a lopsided smile and said, “I’ll see you in the room.” He acted like we were old friends. I walked down the hallway thinking about whether I should have anticipated that open
ing gesture, or whether he was really showing me more respect than he would others. There was actually part of me that thought I had done something to earn his respect and that it should somehow be meaningful to me because of who he was. Of course, this was just Epstein doing what he did best—manipulating.
It’s crazy to think that we took this deposition while Epstein was technically still in “jail,” spending twelve hours of his day down the hall from the deposition room at the Florida Science Foundation. He invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to hours of questions. He read a long, prepackaged script that was constructed to obstruct the deposition.
Unbeknownst to me, Bill was texting Russell Adler during the deposition, explaining that Epstein was making a mockery of the deposition process by invoking constitutional amendments in response to every question. Russell came over to meet us for lunch and we discussed that the law in Florida suggests a plaintiff may be entitled to an “adverse inference” against a defendant who invokes constitutional protection. (In some states, the judge will prohibit the plaintiff’s lawyer from telling the jury it should consider the defendant’s “taking of the Fifth” as a sign of guilt or liability, while other states allow the plaintiff’s lawyer to make that argument, called an “adverse inference.”) I suggested to Russell that going through all the factually intensive questions that I had was more detrimental than it was beneficial. Epstein was paying close attention to every word and learning what we knew and what we did not know from my questions.
If we continued down that road, it would have only enabled him to better prepare for trial. My suggestion was that we had already gained sufficient advantage through his Fifth Amendment invocations and whatever adverse inference to which we might be entitled. We should spend the rest of the deposition asking the questions that would likely increase the punitive damage award against him if he continued to refuse to answer. Russell agreed.
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