Relentless Pursuit

by Bradley J. Edwards

  He told me he represented a French guy I may have heard of, Jean-Luc Brunel. I was thinking, I may have heard of him? Are you kidding me? I had served him for a deposition, he had left messages for Epstein on the message pads offering a “2 × 8 year-old Russian girl,” and had been a targeted witness of mine for years. He was one of Epstein’s best friends, who stayed at Epstein’s house and who had escaped his deposition with some lie delivered by a lawyer paid for by Jeffrey. Not only did I know who he was, but anyone who knew anything about Jean-Luc Brunel or Jeffrey Epstein knew that I knew who Jean-Luc was. Titone’s comment made me even more suspicious about his reason for being there.

  As he continued to explain why he represented Jean-Luc, I started asking questions. “Is he willing to give me a list of all the girls he knew Epstein had abused? Is he willing to turn over his photos of Epstein and the girls?” Titone backpedaled quickly, saying that he had only met his client once. They had mutual friends, including another French guy who owned property in Miami Beach and who had recommended Titone to Brunel. Titone told me that he had filed a lawsuit for Brunel against Epstein in Miami, in January, and that he needed my help in order to get it served on Epstein. I was trying to make sense of these comments and what I suspected was a different motive for the visit.

  He’s a practicing lawyer, and yet he says he needs my help effecting service on Jeffrey Epstein? Epstein was a registered sex offender who couldn’t go anywhere in the world without telling various government agencies where he was at all times. And he had been successfully served with more than twenty lawsuits. Plus, hardly anyone in the world knew his day-to-day travel and living routine better than Jean-Luc Brunel. You’re asking for help on this? Come on.

  Then Titone dropped a timely bombshell. “My client has photos, lots of photos. With Epstein, and his friends. He tells me some even include young girls,” he explained, immediately grabbing my attention. Of course, this was something I couldn’t ignore. But again, what did he want from me? Surely it couldn’t be help serving Epstein with a lawsuit.

  It was probably more difficult to set up a meeting at my office and catch me at a convenient time than it was for Jean-Luc to figure out how to serve Jeffrey Epstein. Jean-Luc knew all of Epstein’s staff, his travel companions, and even the doormen at Epstein’s apartment complex in New York where Jean-Luc used to live, which, to the best of my knowledge, was still Jean-Luc’s residence.

  On the face of it, a lawsuit by Jean-Luc against Epstein was unlikely. “What did Jean-Luc sue Epstein for?” I asked. Titone then whipped out a copy of the complaint, which, including attachments, was more than one hundred pages long. I flipped through it. “So let me get this straight,” I said. “Jean-Luc, who 60 Minutes and the BBC reported was kicked out of his prior modeling agency in Europe for having sex with teenage models, is suing Jeffrey Epstein, his friend and pal who helped Jean-Luc get back on his feet? And the lawsuit claims that Epstein’s molestation of children has somehow hurt Jean-Luc’s reputation? I gotta tell you, Joe, this lawsuit makes no sense.”

  He shrugged. I continued: “I’ve been told that Epstein financed Jean-Luc’s modeling agency so that Jean-Luc could import girls for Jeffrey and stash them at the apartments at 301 East Sixty-Sixth Street. I’ve taken a statement of a witness who has driven some of these girls to Jeffrey Epstein’s home. After Epstein was arrested, Jean-Luc was one of the people who frequently visited him in jail. After his release, while he was on house arrest, Jean-Luc stayed at Epstein’s home. The association you’re saying damaged Jean-Luc was comprised of a series of choices made by Jean-Luc, most important his decision to lie in order to avoid his deposition. What is your cause of action?”

  He answered, “Obstruction of justice.” I asked him to explain. He said something along the lines of “Well, Jean-Luc knew of the suspicions that you had about Jeffrey Epstein and him. Jean-Luc claims that despite his past, he wasn’t involved in sex with little girls. It was only Epstein. He knows all about that, and witnessed it on occasion, but he wasn’t personally involved. When you served a deposition notice on Jean-Luc in 2009, he was finally going to get his opportunity tell the world under oath of his lack of involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex escapades. He wanted to testify. He flew to Palm Beach for that deposition and stayed with Epstein. He was anxious to provide information that was going to erase the cloud of suspicion that hung over him, but because of his lengthy relationship with Epstein, it was going to be damaging to his old friend. The night before the deposition, Epstein ordered Jean-Luc not to show up. Jean-Luc was told that his deposition would be canceled and that he should leave the country. Like everyone around Jeffrey, Jean-Luc knew he had no choice but to obey.”

  I still thought that this was another Epstein ploy. But I could not resist the urge to fall into whatever this trap was in order to find out what was really going on. I agreed that I would tell him where Epstein was so he could serve him if he would let me interview Jean-Luc. I had enough information to make me confident that I would be able to tell if Jean-Luc was lying. He was a very important witness. If there was even a 1 percent chance that he would cooperate against Epstein, it was worth the risk that I was being played. Titone told me that he would get back to me on that request and left the office.

  I thought about the meeting. It was beyond strange, but if it was orchestrated by Epstein, it was smart. He knew that I identified Brunel as a key piece of the puzzle, a prized target, whose cooperation I would not be able to turn down no matter my level of suspicion. Epstein would be able to use my communication line with Brunel to learn what I knew and what I didn’t and how close I was to having Epstein criminally investigated again.

  I looked back at the complaint. One grown adult told another grown adult not to show up for a deposition. They were best friends connected only by the public exposure inflicted on each of them separately because of their penchant for teenage girls. And this was what supposedly drove them apart?

  After I finished reading, I contacted our investigator and described what had just happened. My feeling was that for this to be a worthwhile move for Epstein, he had to get something out of it. What if it was more than just a means of communicating in order to relay back to Epstein what I knew and what I was doing to learn more? Was it possible that Joe Titone was a conduit carrying a bug to plant in my office? Our investigator instructed us on where to look and what to look for. We spent the better part of the rest of the day retracing Titone’s steps from the time he exited his car to go into our office until he got back into his car to leave.

  We found nothing, but I wasn’t convinced. Jeffrey Epstein would only use the latest technology to bug us and certainly wouldn’t do it in a way that ran the risk of getting caught.

  I contacted Stan. He’d had government experience and had even prosecuted cases during his time at the Justice Department involving the illegal planting of recording devices. He agreed that Epstein was likely behind this.

  Shortly after that meeting, other strange things started happening in our office. Important emails and documents that we would segregate on our hard drive would disappear. A bunch of our older files got corrupted. Our emails were hacked into more than once. I even asked Stan if there was a way that Epstein had done something to intercept our telephone calls or listen to our cell phone calls. Stan said that he knew of no private citizen doing it but the technology was out there and if anyone could pay to get hold of it, Epstein could.

  Titone would, coincidentally or not, usually call after some important team meeting related to the ongoing Epstein litigation. I had suspected Epstein of wiretapping our cell phones years before when his team would somehow get information that was discussed only in private telephone conversations. To increase that concern, Epstein’s extortionist complaint against me, in which he falsely claimed that I had been involved in the RRA Ponzi scheme, included the allegation that I had illegally wiretapped or bugged his house. This was concerning to me because Epstein’s team were masters of accusing us of und
erhanded tactics that we had never considered using, as a way of deflecting attention from things they were doing themselves.

  When Epstein would aggressively have investigators tail our clients, scaring the living daylights out of them and their families, before we could complain about it, Epstein would make false, crazy allegations that our investigators were hopping around his property dressed like ninjas. This history of false allegations elevated my fear that Epstein might have dispatched Titone to plant a bug.

  One day I received a brown box in the mail with no return label. It looked sketchy. As I started opening it, I realized it had multiple layers. Each time I opened one, there was another. Nobody in my office knew a package was coming and it had no markings on it. I started to wonder if I should have an expert open it for me, or if we should even open it at all.

  I carried this mysterious package over to Brittany’s office and asked her jokingly if she would open it for me just in case. After a few minutes of ridiculous speculation about what could be inside, we finally took our chances and opened the smallest box in the package. What we found was a handwritten note next to a flip phone. The handwritten note contained instructions on how to set up the phone with a number to call once that was done. I immediately called the number and heard Stan at the other end. He told me this was how we were going to communicate on certain matters until we knew that my worries about Titone were needless. Anytime we had something particularly sensitive to discuss, including new witnesses, we would use this phone.

  Was this Stan just being paranoid? Or would Epstein really concoct this whole elaborate plan to bug my office and wiretap our phones? It seemed risky even for him. But I guess it was better to be safe than sorry, so burner phones became a new way of life.

  THIRTY-THREE THE PLOT THICKENS

  OUR TEAM WAS WORKING HARD to make sure we stayed focused on what mattered. Virginia Roberts had important revelations that should not be silenced. While Epstein and his entourage were looking to shut her down, she was determined to be heard. She was confident in the truth and in putting an end to Epstein’s abusive clan who had chased her out of the country years earlier and no doubt had continued to leave a trail of victims in its wake. To accomplish her goal, she needed airtime on a major network.

  We began putting feelers out and all were interested. Because ABC’s Jim Hill was an adept investigative reporter who understood the complexities of the case far better than anyone else, and because Virginia really liked Amy Robach, the ABC anchor committed to the story, we chose ABC.

  We met with ABC personnel prior to April 2015 when we flew with Virginia to New York for the taping of her full-story interview with Amy. David Boies’s partner Sigrid McCawley, Stan, Virginia, and I worked with the ABC team to make sure they had everything they needed. Virginia’s interview was powerful. The Epstein organization was finally going to be exposed. There would be no more abuse. Light was going to be shed on the expansiveness of the abuse. Moreover, ABC was going to publicize the sweetheart deal Epstein and his co-conspirators got in Florida and reveal how the government mistreated the Florida victims.

  Amy was prepared, and Virginia’s chemistry with her could not have been better. We were told on the set it was one of the best interviews anyone had seen and would air on Good Morning America first before airing on one of their longer platforms. After being strung along for weeks, we were finally told that because Virginia talked about her interactions with Prince Andrew, the network had to reach out to the British royal family and also to an attorney for Epstein since nearly the entire story discussed the inner workings of the Epstein sex-trafficking organization.

  For some reason, both presented a problem for ABC. We were not told much, other than the network was scared that they would lose access to the royal family if they aired the interview. We were also told that Alan Dershowitz returned requests for comment by Jeffrey Epstein, and that whatever he said contributed to their apprehension to put Virginia on air. For whatever reasons, ABC never aired the interview, which deeply frustrated those closest to the story, including Amy and Jim.

  (More than four years later, after Epstein’s sexual abuse was widely reported by many other networks, Amy Robach was caught on a hot mic on set expressing her frustration over that lost opportunity: “I’ve had the story for three years. I’ve had this interview with Virginia Roberts. We would not put it on the air. First of all, I was told, who’s Jeffrey Epstein. No one knows who that is. This is a stupid story. Then the Palace found out that we had her whole allegation about Prince Andrew and threatened us in a million different ways. We were so afraid we wouldn’t be able to interview Kate and Will that also quashed the story.… I tried for three years to get it on to no avail. And now it’s all coming out and it’s like these new revelations. And I freaking had all of it.… Brad Edwards, the attorney, three years ago saying, like there will come a day when we will realize Jeffrey Epstein was the most prolific pedophile this country has ever known.”)

  Before, during, and after Virginia’s interview with ABC, we were still dealing with the sideshow that Alan Dershowitz was creating. It wasn’t all bad, though. As a direct consequence of him going on national news, more witnesses continued to come forward. People called from New York, Paris, New Mexico, and all over the world, helping us to build our case. As we were sifting through the calls about Epstein and his misdeeds, we were also now getting calls about Dershowitz himself. Most of them had nothing to do with any of the litigation that we were involved in, some were actually funny, some I wish I could forget.

  A neighbor from Dershowitz’s condo building in Miami called to recount in great detail how she would witness Dershowitz dress in a way to hide his identity while he walked the beach to look at topless girls sunbathing near their condo. Because of this behavior, the woman told Dershowitz’s wife that he was a pervert. She claimed that in response Dershowitz got in her face and threatened her, forcing her to go to the police in fear for her safety. To confirm her account, we ordered the police report she said she filed. And there it was. She had told the police that Dershowitz said, “You don’t know what I am capable of,” and “You are going to be so sorry that you said that to my wife.”

  Other people telephoned to tell us how they had seen Dershowitz skinny-dipping on Martha’s Vineyard. One Vineyard resident recalled walking up to a volleyball game where Dershowitz was playing nude.

  Calls continued to come in fast and furious and some from very important witnesses, most of whom we went to meet in person, although because of the volume we didn’t always get to everyone before the caller changed his or her mind about cooperating. Some people had information about not only Epstein or Dershowitz but also other powerful figures, and these callers were usually nervous.

  On one occasion we heard from a former Harvard student who was living in New York. She told me how in 2004, a friend of hers had brought her to Little Saint James and Epstein was there with underage girls. She was very frightened to share the information, but ultimately revealed that she had been to Epstein’s island twice. She wasn’t only scared of Epstein but also of his very powerful friends. She knew of at least one heavyweight politician who was close with Epstein who had received erotic massages from young females provided by Epstein.

  We talked several times. She wanted to share more but was scared to death. In most instances—in probably all but this one—I gained the trust of the various witnesses who came forward and could put them at ease. But this witness was different, perhaps understandably so. She had a career with everything to lose and nothing to gain, as she put it. Before I left Florida to meet her in New York, she called to say she’d changed her mind about cooperating. Realizing the importance of her information, especially as it corroborated generally the concept Virginia had advanced of Epstein lending his girls out to other powerful men, I sent an investigator to see her. Apparently, his approach was bad, and the witness called to tell me she was afraid for her life and never wanted to talk about this again.

&nb
sp; While I have some educated guesses, I still don’t know who the politician was. But over the years, we heard from numerous witnesses, including victims themselves, about various powerful friends of Epstein reaping the erotic massage benefits of that friendship, although it seemed most of those friends stayed clear of the girls who were underage.

  * * *

  The summer of 2015 was the summer I nearly stopped sleeping altogether. I was coaching two of my sons’ football teams, was embroiled in two personal lawsuits (suing Epstein in one that was still ongoing after six years, and Dershowitz in the other), and was also running a busy litigation firm.

  In June, I was preparing for a long, fairly high-profile wrongful-death trial representing the husband of a pregnant woman who was hit by a drunk driver while she sat in a hotel cabana (yes, the car drove through the cabana), killing her and her unborn child. As with any case, I put all others out of my mind so that my total focus was on the trial at hand, although this was especially difficult to do. As I walked to and from the courtroom every day, I was frequently asked by lawyers and judges about the public assault Dershowitz had launched on me, the lawsuit I’d filed against him, my pursuit of justice for Epstein’s victims, and how each was affecting the others. I made a conscious effort not to allow the hallway chatter to impact my trial.

  After a very emotional three-week trial, the jury returned a verdict in my client’s favor for $24 million. The verdict provided some justice for the family, which, as inadequate as it was given the terrible loss, was all I could help provide. Trials are emotionally draining, not only on the plaintiffs, but on the lawyers as well. To recover, I usually try to take a few days off afterward, but this time I couldn’t. I had already lost valuable time. There was no choice but to immediately turn back to Epstein (and Dershowitz).