The secret settlements protecting Jeffrey Epstein's friends

Members of the House Oversight Committee have discussed issuing subpoenas to people who could testify about secret settlements between some of Jeffrey Epstein's friends and his accusers, Business Insider has learned.

Some of Epstein's accusers have signed confidential pre-litigation settlements with friends of the sex offender whom they have also accused of misconduct, according to three people with direct knowledge of such settlements, including Brad Edwards, an attorney who has represented more than 200 of Epstein's accusers. These settlements include non-disclosure agreements that prohibit them from speaking publicly about their experiences, Edwards and the other people said.

The House Oversight Committee is investigating the Justice Department's handling of its Epstein investigations and is scheduled to conduct voluntary interviews with associates of Epstein in the coming weeks. Those conversations won't be under oath, and participants won't be legally compelled to answer every question.

Subpoenas could require witnesses to answer questions even if they have signed a non-disclosure agreement, though the committee would need the majority's support to issue one. A spokesperson for committee Democrats said that its members have discussed issuing the subpoenas. A spokesperson for committee Republicans, who hold the majority, said they are aware of the settlements between Epstein's accusers and his associates and declined to comment further.

It's unclear how many Epstein accusers signed pre-litigation settlements and with how many of his associates. No public records for them exist. One person told Business Insider they had direct knowledge of settlements with four of Epstein's friends who were accused of sexual misconduct by more than 20 women between them. The person said the women accused those men of coercing them into nonconsensual and abusive sexual encounters.

A settlement isn't necessarily an indication of wrongdoing, and it isn't uncommon for people to agree to them for expediency. While parties can use settlements to resolve civil legal claims, they do not have the power to block criminal proceedings.

The House Oversight Committee raised the issue of secret settlements in an interview with Bill Gates earlier this month. A Republican staffer asked the former Microsoft CEO if he had secured a settlement "in connection to Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, or any of their victims," according to a transcript made public Tuesday. Gates said he had not.

The existence of these settlements came into the spotlight because of a court filing by Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 for her role in grooming and recruiting girls for Epstein to sexually abuse. In December of last year, Maxwell filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus — a last-ditch attempt to get out of prison after the US Supreme Court rejected her criminal appeal. Her filing cited a 2024 podcast interview in which Edwards said that his clients could have brought lawsuits against between 10 and 15 of Epstein's friends. Some of those men signed confidential settlements with his clients over allegations of mistreatment, Edwards said.

"There are still people that I personally think should have been exposed, but not at the expense of your client's wishes," Edwards said on the "Interesting Lawyers" podcast episode, an interview that had largely flown under the radar.

Edwards said that in those cases, his clients wanted to move on rather than file a public lawsuit.

"I'm not a big fan of confidentiality, but it serves a purpose in a certain circumstance, and this was the right circumstance," he said on the podcast.

Maxwell argued in her court filing that these men "could equally be considered as co-conspirators" and that she was denied a fair trial because she would have called those men as witnesses had she known about the settlements.

In an interview with Business Insider, Edwards declined to answer questions about confidential settlements between his clients and Epstein's friends. He said that, in general, Epstein had "lent out" about 50 girls and women to about 30 men from the 1990s until his second arrest in 2019.

"Some of the men were with multiple of Epstein's victims, and some were only with one," he told Business Insider.

Epstein killed himself in jail in 2019, while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. His death made more urgent the question of who else could be held accountable for his crimes. Seven years later, Maxwell is the only other person in Epstein's sex-trafficking operation charged by the Justice Department.

After Epstein's death, the Justice Department examined who else in his orbit may have participated in his sex-trafficking operation. The Epstein files show that the Federal Bureau of Investigation identified several potential co-conspirators. Aside from Maxwell, most of the other people identified in internal FBI documents as potential co-conspirators were also victims — girls or young women who brought others to Epstein. Except for model-recruiting agent Jean-Luc Brunel, whom French authorities charged with rape and who killed himself in jail before trial, no other men in Epstein's vast network have faced criminal charges for sex crimes. When the Justice Department re-examined the Epstein investigation last year, it concluded there wasn't sufficient evidence to investigate "uncharged third parties."

Epstein frequently kept women and girls around him, hiring them as assistants and masseuses. He offered them financial benefits, job opportunities, and other ways to advance their education as part of a grooming process, according to records released by the Justice Department and testimony from his accusers.

He sometimes introduced them to his friends, and those friends sometimes sexually abused them, women have alleged in lawsuits, depositions, and interviews with prosecutors, according to court filings and records released by the Justice Department.

Edwards and another person familiar with settlements between Epstein's friends and accusers both said that Epstein would send his victims to friends after the women had been in his orbit for a long time.

He "lent out" these women to people "influential in the world economy and celebrities," one of the people familiar with the settlements said.

Some of those relationships were consensual, Edwards said in the podcast interview.

Edwards said that in some cases, clients told him, "Look, I have a relationship with this now very famous or very powerful person, and it's very good. I could call them on my cellphone right now. He never mistreated me. He didn't know what was going on."

Some misconduct accusations against Epstein's associates have played out in public, and several have reached public settlements or resolutions.

One Epstein victim, Virginia Giuffre, filed lawsuits against then-Prince Andrew in 2021 and Alan Dershowitz in 2019, alleging that Epstein directed her to have sex with both men. Both men denied the allegations and later settled the suits. As part of his settlement, the British royal agreed to make "a substantial donation" to Giuffre's charity and recognized her "as an established victim of abuse" without personally admitting wrongdoing. In Dershowitz's case, both parties said the resolution didn't involve any payments and Giuffre said she "may have made a mistake" in identifying him.

In court filings, media interviews, and a memoir written before her death last year, Giuffre named other friends of Epstein with whom she said she had sex during the time that Epstein sexually abused her. She did not sue those men.

Edwards, who represented Giuffre, said her allegations weren't unique.

"Her experiences, in terms of Epstein sending people out to a select group of his friends, were actually more typical than I think any of us realized in 2009, when Virginia first said it," Edwards told Business Insider.

Edwards also represented a model in a lawsuit against the psychiatrist and investor Henry Jarecki. The woman, who used a "Jane Doe" pseudonym, alleged that she was abused by Epstein, and that Epstein introduced her to Jarecki, who raped her and treated her as "his modern-day sex slave."

Jarecki denied the allegations. The woman withdrew the lawsuit 10 months later. In statements at the time, she said she believed Jarecki "did not mean me any harm," and Jarecki said he "never engaged in any abusive conduct with the complainant or any other person."

"Dr. Jarecki has for some time been suffering from advanced dementia and is non‑communicative," a spokesperson for his business office, Falconwood Corporation, told Business Insider. "Prior to the onset of his illness, Dr. Jarecki privately expressed deep regret over any association with Epstein."

Leon Black, the former CEO of Apollo Global Management, paid $62.5 million to the US Virgin Islands as part of a January 2023 settlement to resolve the government's legal claims "related to Jeffrey Epstein, whether known or unknown." Records released by the Justice Department show that following Epstein's death, federal and local prosecutors in Manhattan examined sexual assault allegations against Black, who sent Epstein more than $150 million for what Black has said was tax advice. Neither office brought criminal charges against Black, who has denied wrongdoing related to Epstein.

Other allegations against Epstein's associates have become public through interviews already conducted by the House Oversight Committee. Sarah Kellen, a client of Edwards who said Epstein abused her for years, told the committee in May that Philip Levine, who later became mayor of Miami Beach, sexually assaulted her while she was on a trip with Epstein. And she said Frédéric Fekkai, the celebrity hairstylist, sexually assaulted her before he introduced her to Epstein.

Committee Chairman James Comer asked the Justice Department in June to investigate Kellen's allegations against Levine and Fekkai. Chris Vlasto, a spokesperson for Levine, told Business Insider that Levine's "intimate encounter" with Kellen was consensual and her allegations of misconduct were false. Mark Herr, a spokesperson for Fekkai, previously said her allegations were "categorically false" and that Fekkai wasn't aware of Epstein's sex trafficking.

A Justice Department spokesperson told Business Insider that prosecutors previously determined "there was no prosecutable case" after interviewing Kellen. The DOJ would reevaluate if the committee sent it a formal criminal referral "with additional evidence of any federal crime," the spokesperson said.

With subpoenas, the House Oversight Committee could force people with NDAs to answer questions, said David Rapallo, a former top lawyer on the committee.

Lauren Hersh, the CEO of World Without Exploitation, an organization that has advocated on behalf of Epstein's victims before Congress, said that the committee should use subpoenas to pierce any confidentiality agreements and ensure "those who caused devastating harm are held accountable."

"Powerful people, including Jeffrey Epstein's friends, have used NDAs as a tool to silence victims," she told Business Insider.

Epstein acquaintances expected to speak to the committee in coming weeks — including Black, Dershowitz, and ex-Barclays CEO Jes Staley — would appear for transcribed interviews, not subpoenaed depositions.

As a result, they can legally decline to answer questions, said Rapallo. The terms and scope of transcribed interviews are often negotiated between lawyers for the interview subject and the committee's majority party, Rapallo said.

Dershowitz told Business Insider he plans to answer every question and welcomes a subpoena. A representative for Black declined to comment.Attorneys for Staley didn't respond.

The committee could also issue "friendly subpoenas" to Epstein's accusers, much like Congress routinely uses to protect corporate whistleblowers who have NDAs. In that case, the committee would likely need the cooperation of the victims. A spokesperson for House Oversight Democrats said the committee would let victims decide whether to appear before the committee.

Edwards, the attorney representing Epstein accusers, said that the vast majority of victims want to move on with their lives because of the media frenzy around the Epstein story.

He pointed to the ongoing British media interest following a BBC interview in January in which Edwards alleged that one of his clients, when she was a young woman, was sent by Epstein to spend a night with then-Prince Andrew at his residence, Royal Lodge, and was given a tour of Buckingham Palace. Representatives for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor didn't respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.

"The prime example is the Prince Andrew madness," Edwards said. "There were victims that would have cooperated not only civilly, but criminally, and they want nothing to do with it anymore because the British press calls me, them, everybody."

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