Kirkland & Ellis lawyer sought use of Epstein helicopter after securing plea

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

A Kirkland & Ellis lawyer who helped Jeffrey Epstein avoid federal child sex crime charges in 2007 later invited him to his son’s bar mitzvah and asked to borrow his helicopter for a trip to the Hamptons, according to emails released by the US Department of Justice.

Jay Lefkowitz, a senior litigator at the world’s highest-grossing law firm, played an important role in arranging for Epstein to plead guilty to lesser state charges of soliciting prostitution from a minor, part of what both Republicans and Democrats have called a “sweetheart deal”.

Documents released last week show that in May 2011, less than two years after Epstein’s release from prison, the child sex offender’s assistant emailed a person who appears to have been Epstein’s pilot, saying Lefkowitz was planning to use the helicopter.

“He wants to depart from Teterboro and fly out to the Hamptons with his wife for their anniversary (how romantic!),” the assistant wrote. “I can be cupid :),” the person replied. Further emails include reminders about Lefkowitz’s planned use of the helicopter, though there is no confirmation of whether the flight took place.

Months later, in September 2011, Epstein’s assistant told him Lefkowitz had invited him to his son’s bar mitzvah in Jerusalem. Epstein said he could not attend.

A spokesperson for Kirkland declined comment. Lefkowitz did not respond to phone and email messages seeking comment.

The messages were among millions of pages of documents related to Epstein that the DoJ published in the past week, after Congress voted overwhelmingly in November to force it to release its files on the late financier.

Epstein was rearrested on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019 and died in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial.

The so-called Epstein files have drawn attention to the disgraced investor’s vast network of connections across politics, finance, business, academia and the media, revealing his ties to figures ranging from Elon Musk to Peter Mandelson and top Goldman Sachs lawyer Kathy Ruemmler.

They show Brad Karp, chair of the law firm Paul Weiss, appeared to help Epstein in March 2019 — four months before his arrest — by looking at a draft of a letter that Epstein’s lawyers wrote for The New York Times in which they defended the earlier plea deal. Karp said the “draft looked strong” and later that he had sent it to four “editorial folks I know best at the Times”.

Messages referencing Lefkowitz, who is also a lecturer at Columbia Law School, indicate the attorney combined a personal and professional relationship with Epstein. They cover a period spanning at least nine years.

In 2016, Lefkowitz emailed Epstein about a “very nice building you built”, with an attached image.

Lefkowitz has won Supreme Court cases for pharmaceutical industry clients and has previously worked as a White House adviser to former president George W Bush and the US special envoy for human rights in North Korea.

Kirkland represented Epstein on a series of matters. A spreadsheet released among the DoJ documents says the law firm acted on matters including “DOJ investigation and related lawsuits” and “Jane Doe 101 Litigation”.

The document, which also appears to summarise Epstein’s payments to Kirkland, says the firm billed him more than $3mn in a period ending in September 2009. The earliest payments in the spreadsheet are in 2007.

An undated submission to the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, on a Kirkland letterhead, said Epstein was “a successful businessman and noted philanthropist with no prior criminal record”.

It said Epstein was “an ordinary ‘John’, not a pimp” and that sexual activity involving him and masseuses was “primarily self-masturbation on the part of Mr Epstein” which was “spontaneous and resulted from face-to-face conversations during the massage”. It said Epstein’s conduct involved women over 16.

The emails illustrate the at-times friendly tone of conversations between Lefkowitz and Alexander Acosta, the then-US attorney in Miami who had previously worked at Kirkland and who negotiated Epstein’s plea deal.

In a January 2008 email to Lefkowitz, Acosta wrote: “Jay — Thanks for the email. I sent it along to the trial team. I’m also looking forward to when this is over, so we can talk about non-work matters. Hope all is well with you and the family. Alex.”