* * *
An important decision on my malicious prosecution claim against Epstein was scheduled to come down any day. There was a lot on the line. If the court decided in Epstein’s favor and ruled that malicious prosecution was no longer a recognized claim in Florida (the Wolfe v. Foreman case referred to earlier), Epstein would almost immediately proceed to get a judgment against me in the millions of dollars. He and Dershowitz would then be in a great position to band together once again and go on the attack to finish me off.
While the appellate court had not ruled in my case, it did come down with a decision in a different case that raised the same issue. And the ruling looked good for me. The Fourth District Court of Appeal had disagreed with the Wolfe v. Foreman opinion that Epstein had used against me—the one that essentially abolished malicious prosecution as a claim in Florida. All of that legal jargon just meant that I was likely back in the game. Sure, there were some minor distinctions between the cases, but for the most part the central issue was the same—a person could be sued for malicious prosecution for filing a knowingly false complaint against another person, as Epstein had done to me. The tide had shifted heavily in my favor.
In light of that opinion, the trial court in my case ordered Epstein and me to attend a mediation in advance of any ruling from the appellate court. When a case is decided by a higher court that may change the outcome of other cases affected by the higher court’s new decision, a trial court will often make the parties try to settle their differences, in light of the changed law, thereby hoping to avoid a long and expensive trial.
It was a strange time for mediation because, on the one hand, the trial court’s order dismissing my case had not been overturned by a higher court. Thus, if a higher court upheld the trial court’s decision in an appeal, it was I who would owe Epstein many millions as payment for his attorney’s fees. On the other hand, in light of this new higher court decision on a similar case, the appeal in my case against Epstein looked as if it was going to go in my favor, in which case my malicious prosecution action would be reinstated. Given the egregious nature of his conduct against me, he would be the one at risk of losing big. This all created an interesting negotiating dynamic.
In every mediation that I had ever been in, the mediator sat at the head of a large table with one party on one side and the other party on the other. When we arrived at this mediation in Palm Beach, we found the mediator in the lobby and began walking to the large conference room where the parties would meet for the opening introduction and statements. Lining one side of the table were half a dozen lawyers representing Epstein. The seat at the head of the table, usually reserved for the mediator, who would command the room and run the meeting, was occupied. Leaning back in the mediator’s chair, wearing a tie, one leg folded over the other, his hands intertwined on his lap, was Jeffrey Epstein. “Is this,” he asked as we entered, “where I’m supposed to sit?”
The most startling thing about his presentation was not his preemptive move on the mediator’s seat but the fact that he was wearing a tie. This had more meaning than anyone other than I would understand. This was a guy who was once quoted saying that he never had to be anywhere. He spent his life in sweatpants and monogrammed pullover sweatshirts, refusing to accept most societal norms. Yet here he was wearing a tie, feigning respect. But this was not a show of respect.
I looked at his tie a little closer and saw that it was extraordinarily short, extending just beyond the second button from the top. It looked like a seven-year-old’s tie. He was giving the impression of respect while also making a mockery of the typical mediation or lawyer’s attire. He loved to make fun of lawyers—how stupid they are, how they are always slaves to their clients. Making fun of the lawyer’s monkey suit was just another of his childish jabs. Ironically—because I, too, wanted Jeffrey to know that he was not getting undue respect from me—I showed up in jeans and no tie.
The mediator quickly relocated Epstein and took his spot at the head of the table, with the lawyers closest to him and the clients—Jeffrey and me—at the end across from one another. The mediator started the same way that every mediator starts, by explaining the benefits of mediation and the unpredictability of trial. Before he began, Jeffrey and I locked eyes. Initially, both equally strong and almost simultaneously in response to what sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher in the background, we rolled our eyes at each other as if to say, This guy knows nothing about either one of us, or what we have gone through to get here.
Unconventionally, before any of our lawyers could speak, I said, “We don’t need to spend any more time. There is nothing that anyone is going to say in this room that is going to change the mind of anyone else who matters in this room. I speak for myself, and also, I know in this regard, I speak for Jeffrey as well. If any differences will ever be resolved between the two of us, lawyers are not going to help.”
Before I could finish, Jeffrey chimed in, “I agree.”
The mediator asked what we recommended. I stood up and said, “We’ll be back.”
Jeffrey and I got up and walked to another room. Entering, we saw a table to the left with drinking glasses lined up. Jeffrey turned to me and said, “We should just start breaking the shit out of all of these glasses and make everyone think we’re killing each other.” I laughed. We sat at the small table in the room across from one another for thirty minutes or so.
There was this unspoken understanding we had with each other: after I truthfully answered one of his questions, it was his turn to do the same. He knew which witnesses I had spoken with, and also hinted that it was unlikely many of those people would give me any more information. I reminded him that I could still subpoena those I had already interviewed for trial. “Like you did with Jean-Luc?” he retorted.
“Speaking of Jean-Luc, I hear he’s suing you. What’s that about?” I took my chance to test whether that lawsuit was an Epstein concoction.
“It’s stupid,” he said with a dismissive poker face. He shifted the subject. “What about Ghislaine, are you going to leave her alone?”
I replied, “Only if you tell me everything I want to know about what you did, where you did it, and who you did it with. If you won’t tell me, I’ll ask Ghislaine. She has to know, since she’s probably the one who created you.”
We traded off this way while approximately a dozen lawyers who did not like one another sat awkwardly in the room, waiting for one or both of us to emerge. We got nowhere. The meeting ended with Epstein saying that he knew I wanted him to be arrested. “Since that will never happen, Brad, I strongly suggest we be done with each other. You drop all the cases and just go away,” he said.
“We will continue to agree to disagree about how this is going to end,” I responded quickly, and got up to leave.
“Is this the Brad Edwards negotiating method?” he said as he laughed and rocked back in his chair before rising to stand. Before we left the room, he said, “Let me think about this and I’ll be in touch. Don’t you think we should throw at least one of these glasses at each other before we leave the room?” getting me to laugh one last time.
We walked back to the main mediation room together and announced that we had not been able to resolve the case, or anything else, for that matter. But there was one more surprise before Epstein’s team left. Just then, the process server we had hired to serve Jeffrey Epstein for another deposition walked in and served a subpoena on him. His lawyers were furious, yelling that they would seek sanctions for us using a mediation to get Epstein into a room where we could serve him with a subpoena. Jack and I just grinned as we left.
* * *
Epstein called a week later. “We need to resolve our case,” he said, speaking about our personal lawsuit. He continued, “But this Dershowitz thing is making things complicated for me. I don’t care about him, but it drags me in. It needs to be resolved, too. And all of the cases involving me need to be resolved.” The last comment was his way of saying that he wanted to find a way to
settle the CVRA case, but he knew it was risky for him to say that directly, so he chose those words carefully. “I’m always honest with you. I always fight fair with you. I never use my full resources against you, but it is getting to a point where you are leaving me little choice.”
“I will not talk to you about the CVRA case,” I told him first.
“Understood,” he said.
“With Dershowitz, I want you to be honest with me and answer some questions about him and others,” I said as a condition precedent.
“What do you want to know?” he offered.
“Tell me the names of all of your friends who had sex with your girls,” I asked first. When he didn’t respond, I sensed that maybe that question overstepped his invitation. So I rattled off a series of narrower questions: “How many of your friends did you send Virginia Roberts to? Was Alan Dershowitz one of those friends?”
“I can’t answer any of these questions. You know that,” he said.
“If you’re not going to answer these basic questions, then I don’t see us getting anywhere,” I finished.
“For now,” he responded before abruptly hanging up.
Epstein always had the ability to resolve all of the civil cases with the exception of the CVRA. But he could not bring himself to do so on my terms. The civil litigation was what gave me subpoena power and the ability to investigate and take depositions. He could have stopped all of that by paying plaintiffs for the damage he caused. But he didn’t.
At several points, he made offhand comments about finding the litigation interesting and equating it to a complex chess game. He enjoyed the “offense and defense of it all.” These types of comments, coupled with the knowledge that he had the financial ability to end any one of these “games” instantly, made me think that in some Br’er Rabbit “don’t throw me in the briar patch” fashion, he wanted to be discovered. No doubt, he did not want to be punished, but he loved letting the world know that he made his own unconventional rules and that the laws of our society did not apply to him.
Now, though, he was getting nervous. Not only was I discovering a lot more information than he wanted me to know, but the Dershowitz thing had amplified the public attention on his activities in a bad way. The situation was running the risk of crossing over from the game he liked playing, where people would admire his unconventional lifestyle of constant erotic massages, to people paying close attention to the details, which included illegalities that could not be forgiven. He didn’t want me to continue to investigate him, track down or subpoena witnesses, or collect more incriminating information, yet he also did not want to give in to my demands that would allow him to avoid those things.
It was hard to pin him down on why he was so hardheaded. He seemed to know that dragging out these cases, which were becoming more of a problem for him by the minute, ran the risk of exposing other crimes he had committed in other jurisdictions. In fact, we talked about that. But when I would tell him why he needed to resolve all cases on my terms, he would end the conversation abruptly, sometimes hanging up without much warning and other times making sure to tell me why he thought my proposed resolutions were not “fair” to him. He and I clearly had a different understanding of the word.
THIRTY-FOUR SIDESWIPE
VIRGINIA WAS MAD ABOUT THE things that Dershowitz had been saying about her, but she was more hurt and offended by what Ghislaine Maxwell had said.
While Dershowitz was preparing his public tirade on Paul and me, Maxwell issued a statement on January 2, 2015, claiming not only that the allegations made by Virginia against her were untrue, but that Virginia’s claims were “obvious lies and should be treated as such.” In Virginia’s mind, Maxwell had been like her mother for a period of her life. To call Virginia a liar was an attempt by Maxwell to use her status to invalidate Virginia. This was devastating.
On September 21, 2015, Virginia filed a defamation claim against Ghislaine Maxwell, claiming that Maxwell’s statement to the press contained, among other things, three deliberate falsehoods: 1) that Virginia’s sworn allegations “against Ghislaine Maxwell are untrue,” 2) that the allegations have been “shown to be untrue,” and 3) that Virginia’s “claims are obvious lies.”
In the initial pleading, Virginia was represented by Boies Schiller Flexner, as Paul and I didn’t want our litigation with Dershowitz to interfere with Virginia’s claim against Maxwell. Not being able to sign the initial pleading against Maxwell irritated Paul and me. Paul and I spent our lives representing crime victims, which is what made us want to stand behind Virginia for all the obvious reasons. Maxwell’s and Dershowitz’s respective attacks on her credibility had already slowed down the charity we had helped her create, Victims Refuse Silence. She was a powerful voice for survivors and her voice had been stolen. We wanted to help her retrieve it. The sooner we could put this mess with Dershowitz behind us, the sooner we could help.
In our absence, David assigned Virginia’s case against Maxwell to the partner whom he trusted the most on these topics in his Fort Lauderdale office, Sigrid McCawley. Known to us as “Superwoman,” Sigrid figures out how to build forty hours into each twenty-four-hour day. She is as genuine as any person you have ever met and can intellectually compete with anyone. More important, she is a master at identifying what is right and what is wrong. She, too, had vetted Virginia.
Virginia’s lawsuit was the first direct attack on Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s right-hand woman during the 1990s and early 2000s. By 2015, Epstein and Maxwell had drifted apart. He had replaced her as his main girlfriend several times over, because she was way too old for him.
Regardless, Maxwell was someone with information that could harm Epstein and expose a part of the criminal organization that had not been revealed extensively at that point—namely the hundreds of victims who existed outside of Florida. Epstein believed Maxwell’s statement about Virginia being a liar was “really stupid.” (In 2018, he told me so.) Either way, Maxwell’s gaffe initiated another intense legal battle that was going to draw Epstein back in, which meant the other side would fight hard. It wasn’t going to be easy. But we had a client as tenacious and resilient as they come.
THIRTY-FIVE STARBUCKS
IN THE FALL OF 2015, I was sitting at lunch with Brittany and another of my law partners, Seth Lehrman, when I got a call on my cell phone that showed the incoming number as 0000000000. I had never seen a phone number come up like that, so I walked outside and answered.
“Brad, it’s Jeffrey. Let’s meet face-to-face.”
When I asked him why, he responded, “I want to see if there’s a way for us to finally get divorced from one another.” This was his way of implying that he wanted to find a way to resolve all cases that involved him, including those where he was not an actual party. The call told me he was concerned. It was one thing when he was being sued and could control the legal defense team. But with these ancillary lawsuits, where his activities and relationships were the primary subjects but he was not fully in control, he knew there was a possibility of real disaster.
We arranged to meet the next morning at a Starbucks in Boca Raton. Yes, this is highly unusual. We were both represented by lawyers. But things between us were far beyond anything lawyers could fix. In fact, every time our lawyers were involved, it only made things worse. Some small part of the coffee shop conversation could be classified as confidential settlement discussions, although the reality is that it was just gamesmanship, part of an eight-year legal chess game between a genius sociopath and me, a lawyer in the business of playing legal chess against bad guys.
I showed up to the Starbucks first and found a table against the wall with my back to the bathroom, facing the front door. Epstein, punctual as usual, appeared wearing his customary gray sweatpants and blue suede slippers with the collar turned up on his monogrammed polo. He took some cash out of his wallet and placed it and his phone on the center of the table where I was sitting and asked me if I wanted anything while he walked to the li
ne to order a drink. He came back to the table and said, “Do I need to count the bills in my wallet?” The funny thing is, while he was at the counter, I had my phone in my hand and I was thinking that I was sure he had some device on his phone that could just steal all my data. Maybe he did. I’ll never know.
We talked for an hour about our philosophical differences, our factual and legal disagreements in the various cases, and our understanding that no matter how bad things ever got we would always keep open this direct line of communication. Jeffrey had a charisma that made you want to engage with him on many topics, and I suspect that I would have been able to resolve important issues with a version of him that likely had existed at some earlier time in his life.
Unfortunately, while he was creative in his problem-solving and could grasp my position and perspective on things, he was difficult to persuade because he felt the law was beneath him and he was beyond the rules that govern the common man. He thought that he was actually invincible. He basically said as much. The fact that our legal system had reaffirmed this idea in his experience only made him more confident in his twisted ideology. He loved to name-drop to let me know how important and protected he was. He had justifications for his diseased behavior that stood between us and prevented us from seeing eye to eye on anything of major importance.
The more we talked, the clearer certain things about him became. He was a very torn soul. He wanted to resolve his legal problems, all of which stemmed from his sexually deviant behavior, but he didn’t really want to change his behavior. He rolled his eyes every time I mentioned the age of consent because the arbitrariness of that concept annoyed him. Knowing we disagreed on that topic, Jeffrey instead got down to business.
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