On Thursday, September 13, 2007, an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the West Palm Beach office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida sent a memorandum up the chain to U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta, the First Assistant, the Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division, and the Chief of Criminal Section I, Northern Division. The subject line: "Operation Leap Year: Second Addendum to Prosecution Memorandum" [EFTA00234505, p. 0]. The memo listed the stylistic and substantive changes made to an indictment package the Office had been preparing for roughly 18 months. The memo's operative sentence is one line above the signature block. "For strategic reasons, I would like to present the indictment to the grand jury on Tuesday, September 25, 2007" [EFTA00234505, p. 0].

On Monday, September 24, 2007, one day before the scheduled grand jury date, the Non-Prosecution Agreement was signed [EFTA00192983].

The draft indictment never went to a grand jury.

What the Draft Was

The 2019 CVRA opinion describes the posture of the investigation as of the spring of 2007. "By May of 2007, the Office had drafted an 82-page prosecution memorandum and a 53-page indictment outlining numerous federal sexual offenses committed by Epstein" [EFTA00800253, p. 2]. The draft was captioned in the Southern District of Florida. The statute headers on the indictment's title page list 7 federal offense categories [EFTA01713627, p. 68]:

• 18 U.S.C. § 371, conspiracy.
• 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b), enticement of a minor via interstate facility.
• 18 U.S.C. § 2423(b), interstate travel for illicit sexual conduct with a minor.
• 18 U.S.C. § 2423(d), engagement in illicit sexual conduct with a minor while traveling.
• 18 U.S.C. § 2423(e), attempt and conspiracy to commit those offenses.
• 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a)(1), sex trafficking of a person under 18.
• 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a)(2), benefiting from trafficking.

Mandatory minimums on the trafficking provisions at the time ran from 10 to 15 years per count. The indictment stacked the conspiracy count (Count 1) across a background section naming overt acts committed between March 2004 and October 2005, then charged individual substantive counts keyed to specific victims and specific trips [EFTA01713627, pp. 68-72].

The investigation's internal codename was Operation Leap Year. The phrase appears across the prosecution memorandum correspondence as a file identifier tied to USAO case number 2006R01181 [EFTA00234505, p. 0].

Who the Draft Named

The draft indictment as it existed before September 13, 2007 named 5 defendants [EFTA01713627, p. 68]:

Jeffrey Epstein. The principal target. Named on the caption page and charged on the conspiracy count.

Three Epstein employees, whose names are redacted in the indexed corpus version. The indictment identifies them by role ("Defendants [NAME], a/k/a [ALIAS], and [NAME]") and establishes, at Paragraph 1 of the Background section, that "Defendant JEFFREY EPSTEIN employed defendants [NAME], [NAME], and [NAME] to perform, among other things, services as personal assistants" [EFTA01713627, p. 68]. The government's own proffered facts, carried later into the NPA's immunity clause [EFTA00192983, p. 20], named 4 individuals as illustrative (not exhaustive) members of the protected class: Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross, Lesley Groff, and Nadia Marcinkova. Which 3 of the 4 were named in the indictment as defendants, and whether the draft would have added a 4th before filing, is a question the redactions in the current production prevent from being answered from the face of the document.

JEGE, Inc. An Epstein-controlled Delaware corporation. The indictment describes JEGE as having "sole business activities" tied to "the operation and ownership of a Boeing 727-31 aircraft bearing tail number N908JE" [EFTA01713627, p. 69]. Epstein was the company's "president, sole director, and sole shareholder."

Hyperion Air, Inc. Another Epstein-controlled Delaware corporation. The indictment describes Hyperion Air's sole business activities as tied to "a Gulfstream G-1159B aircraft bearing tail number N909JE" [EFTA01713627, p. 69]. Epstein was again the president, sole director, and sole shareholder.

Corporate co-defendants are not decorative in federal criminal practice. They are charged when the government intends to reach the organizational machinery of an offense. In this indictment, the aviation corporations are named as parties to the conspiracy to transport minor females across state lines for the acts charged, and their planes (the 727 and the Gulfstream) are the named instrumentalities. Count 1's Overt Acts section lists specific interstate flights aboard each of the two aircraft as acts in furtherance of the conspiracy [EFTA01713627, pp. 71-72].

The Second Addendum

On September 13, 2007, 11 days before the NPA was signed and 12 days before the planned grand jury date, the prosecution memorandum was amended. The Second Addendum, EFTA00234505, records two changes the line prosecutor was making to the package under review.

The first change is the one the record points back to most directly. "At Matt Menchel's request, I removed the corporate defendants, JEGE, Inc., and Hyperion Air, Inc." [EFTA00234505, p. 1]. Matthew Menchel was a senior SDFL prosecutor during the Epstein investigation; his supervisory role over Operation Leap Year is reflected across the memorandum correspondence. The Second Addendum records his instruction without further explanation. Two corporate defendants were removed from the indictment package 11 days before the indictment was scheduled to go to a grand jury. The removal took with it the portion of the case that would have reached Epstein's aviation infrastructure as a corporate matter.

The second change was a reduction in substantive counts. "I removed the majority of the counts and have limited these charges to the four trips" [EFTA00234505, p. 2]. The line prosecutor also removed "the charge related to the transporting of [REDACTED] for criminal sexual activity (18 U.S.C. § 2421) [former Count 59]" [EFTA00234505, p. 1]. The reference to "former Count 59" establishes that the pre-revision draft had at least 60 numbered counts. The Second Addendum reduced the substantive travel charges to 4 trips and dropped former Count 59 entirely.

The Second Addendum also added new victims to the indictment, renumbered the Jane Doe identifiers into chronological order by first contact with Epstein or his staff, and expanded the Overt Acts in Count 1 with more specific descriptions of the alleged sexual conduct [EFTA00234505, pp. 1-2].

The 82-Page Memorandum

The second document the May 2007 posture rested on was the 82-page prosecution memorandum itself [EFTA00800253, p. 2]. Prosecution memoranda in federal practice lay out the theory of the case, the elements of the charged offenses, the evidence supporting each count, the witnesses available to testify, and the anticipated defenses. The original 82-page version has not been produced into the indexed corpus under a clean EFTA identifier; it sits behind a series of addenda (the Second Addendum is EFTA00234505), and the Third Addendum, dated February 19, 2008, is referenced inside the Second Addendum but not yet indexed [EFTA00234505, p. 0]. The original memorandum is one of the Phase 2 anchor targets of the Immunity Shield investigation.

What the corpus does establish is that the memorandum was 82 pages when the Marra court cited it, and that at least two written addenda were prepared in sequence: a Second Addendum dated September 13, 2007, and a Third Addendum dated February 19, 2008, months after the NPA had taken effect.

The Page-Count Question

Marra's 2019 opinion describes the draft as 53 pages [EFTA00800253, p. 2]. The Immunity Shield investigation's own prior evidence log describes the draft as 56 pages, revised through February 2008. The two page counts refer to different versions of the same document. One hypothesis is that the 53-page version is the draft as it stood in May 2007 when the prosecution memorandum was prepared, and the 56-page version is the revised draft worked through the Second Addendum in September 2007 and the Third Addendum in February 2008. The Third Addendum's stated purpose (Jane Doe renumbering) is the kind of revision that adds pages. The record does not confirm this reading; a clean retrieval of both the 53-page and the 56-page drafts is a Phase 2 target.

What the Record Does Not Show

Why Matthew Menchel asked the line prosecutor to remove JEGE, Inc. and Hyperion Air, Inc. from the indictment. What happened inside the Office between September 13, 2007 (the Second Addendum) and September 25, 2007 (the planned grand jury date) that resulted in the NPA being signed on September 24 instead. Whether the draft was ever presented to a grand juror in any form, even in a voluntary pre-indictment exchange. What the Third Addendum, dated February 19, 2008, contained beyond the Jane Doe renumbering. Why the draft continued to be worked on at all in February 2008, after the NPA had been operational for 5 months.

Several Items Remain Open

The 82-page prosecution memorandum, in full. The 53-page draft indictment as it stood in May 2007. The 56-page revised version of the draft. The Third Addendum of February 19, 2008. The grand-jury preparation materials that would ordinarily accompany a draft indictment of this scope. Matthew Menchel's own file memoranda on the removal of the corporate defendants. The SDNY 86-page co-conspirator memorandum (EFTA02731082), which sits on the other side of the NPA and is the next anchor target for this investigation.

The document is dated December 19, 2019. It is titled "Investigation into Potential Co-Conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein." The cover page is marked PRIVILEGED — ATTORNEY WORK PRODUCT/DELIBERATIVE PROCESS and CONFIDENTIAL — SUBJECT TO FED. R. CRIM. P. 6(e). The addressee is Geoffrey S. Berman, U.S. Attorney. The authors are identified only as "AUSAs," their names redacted across every page of the indexed version [EFTA02731082, p. 0].

The memo is 86 pages. It is the second federal prosecution memorandum prepared about Jeffrey Epstein and the people around him, and the first of the two that was delivered after he was dead.

What Preceded It

"On July 2, 2019, a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York returned a sealed indictment (the 'Indictment') charging Jeffrey Epstein with one count of sex trafficking of minors, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1591, and one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371" [EFTA02731082, p. 0]. Epstein was arrested on July 6, 2019. The Indictment was unsealed on July 8, 2019. On or about August 10, 2019, he died in federal custody at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan [EFTA02731082, p. 1].

Four months and nine days later, the memo was delivered to Berman.

The Named Subjects

The Background section of the memo names the subjects of the continued post-indictment investigation. "Since his death, we have continued the investigation that remained ongoing following the return of the Indictment against Epstein into potential co-conspirators. In particular, that investigation focused on Ghislaine Maxwell, [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and Leslie Groff" [EFTA02731082, p. 1]. Two of the four are redacted at the identifier position. The two visible names are Maxwell and Groff.

Leslie Groff is the Leslie Groff of this investigation. The spelling variance is a documentary fact worth noting: the 2007 Non-Prosecution Agreement spells her name "Lesley Groff" [EFTA00192983, p. 20]. The 2019 SDNY memo spells it "Leslie Groff" across 19 indexed pages [EFTA02731082]. The same person, the same immunity recipient, spelled two ways in two federal documents filed 12 years apart.

The Background section also notes that Maxwell's case would be handled separately. "The potential charges against Maxwell will be further analyzed in a separate prosecution memorandum, which is expected to seek authorization to charge Maxwell with federal offenses for her role in facilitating the transport of minors for illegal sex acts" [EFTA02731082, p. 1]. That separate Maxwell memorandum is not EFTA02731082. It is referenced inside it.

The Analysis Section

The memo's Section IV is titled "Analysis." Its purpose, stated at the top: "In light of the evidence gathered during our investigation, as well as the [legal] tools available, in this section, we evaluate whether there is sufficient evidence to charge Leslie Groff and/or Ghislaine Maxwell with a federal crime and, if so, whether such charges would be in the interests of justice" [EFTA02731082, pp. 74-75].

Section IV has five lettered subsections in the indexed record: A, B, C, D, E. Sections A, B, and C name their subjects at the subsection header, and each of those three subject names is redacted in the indexed version. The two subsections whose subjects are visible:

• D. Leslie Groff [EFTA02731082, p. 85]
• E. Ghislaine Maxwell [EFTA02731082, p. 85]

The substantive analysis underneath each lettered subsection is itself heavily redacted across pages 75 through 85. The redaction analysis against the indexed version recovers place names (New York, Palm Beach, Virgin Islands), the names Epstein and Maxwell as document subjects, and one reference to Prince Andrew on page 59; it does not recover the subsection-A, -B, or -C subject names on pages 75 through 84.

The Gap With the 2007 NPA

The 2007 Non-Prosecution Agreement granted federal immunity to Epstein and to "any potential co-conspirators of Epstein, including but not limited to Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross, Lesley Groff, or Nadia Marcinkova" [EFTA00192983, p. 20]. Four people named, plus an open-ended category.

The 2019 SDNY memo analyzes five subjects under Section IV. Only one of the four NPA-named recipients appears by visible name in that analysis: Leslie Groff, at subsection D. Kellen and Marcinkova do not appear by name in the indexed body of the memo at any page. The first name "Adriana" does not appear in the indexed body of the memo; the surname "Ross" appears on two pages, and whether either reference is to Adriana Ross is not established by the surrounding context. Whether any of the three NPA-named recipients other than Groff are the redacted subject of subsection A, B, or C is a question the indexed record does not answer. The redaction recovery against pages 75 through 84 has not surfaced the subject names.

Ghislaine Maxwell, at subsection E, was not named in the 2007 NPA's immunity clause. Her potential charges were sent to a separate prosecution memorandum, which did produce charges; she was indicted by SDNY in July 2020 and convicted at trial in December 2021.

What the Record Does Not Show

The names of the authors of the memo. The identities of the redacted subjects of subsections A, B, and C. Whether any of those three are Sarah Kellen, Nadia Marcinkova, or Adriana Ross. Whether the SDFL's 2007 NPA-era immunity travel with them across jurisdictions, and whether SDNY concluded it did or did not. Whether any of the three were ever charged. The separate prosecution memorandum on Maxwell referenced inside EFTA02731082 and not yet indexed under its own EFTA identifier. The substantive paragraphs of Section IV, which are redacted across pages 75 through 84.

Several Items Remain Open

The separate Maxwell prosecution memorandum referenced inside EFTA02731082. The redaction-recovery work on Section IV pages 75 through 84, to the extent the indexed corpus can surface the three redacted subject names at the subsection-A, -B, and -C headers. A clean cross-reference between the SDNY memo's Section IV subjects and the NPA's four named immunity recipients, once the redactions are recovered. The list of the AUSAs who authored the memo, which the Office has retained even where the indexed release redacts it. The 82-page SDFL prosecution memorandum (spring 2007), which is the document this memo's structure mirrors from the other side of the NPA. Those are the Phase 2 targets the Immunity Shield investigation now turns toward.

The document is a 32-page prosecution memorandum from the U.S. Department of Justice, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The cover page carries the banner Privileged and Confidential — Attorney Work Product and below it the instruction Do Not Disseminate Outside of the SDNY USAO. The caption is United States v. Maxwell, 20 Cr. ___ ( ). The blank is where a court docket number would go once the indictment was filed. The date on the cover is April 10, 2020 [EFTA02731168, p. 0].

The memo is the document the December 2019 memorandum said was coming. EFTA02731082, dated December 19, 2019, had stated that Maxwell's potential charges "will be further analyzed in a separate prosecution memorandum, which is expected to seek authorization to charge Maxwell with federal offenses for her role in facilitating the transport of minors for illegal sex acts" [EFTA02731082, p. 1]. EFTA02731168 is that memorandum.

The authors signed it "/s [REDACTED]" on the final page, above the line Assistant United States Attorneys [EFTA02731168, p. 31]. The signatures are redacted in the indexed version. The addressee line is also redacted. What the memo asks for is not.

What It Sought

"This memorandum seeks authorization to charge GHISLAINE MAXWELL with one count of conspiracy to violate 18 U.S.C. § 2423(a), which prohibits the transportation of a minor for illegal sexual activity, and one count of conspiracy to violate 18 U.S.C. § 2422, which prohibits the enticement of a minor to travel to engage in illegal sexual activity" [EFTA02731168, p. 0].

Two counts. Both conspiracies, both charged under 18 U.S.C. § 371. Count One's object was § 2423(a); Count Two's object was § 2422. Each conspiracy count carried a statutory maximum of 5 years of imprisonment, with no mandatory minimum [EFTA02731168, p. 13].

The charged period on both counts was 1994 to 1997 [EFTA02731168, p. 13]. That window matters. The 2007 Non-Prosecution Agreement's scope-of-investigation clause was bounded at the other end: "any offenses that may have been committed by Epstein against the United States from in or around 2001 through in or around September 2007" [EFTA00192983, p. 1]. The SDNY case against Maxwell was built on conduct that ended 4 years before the NPA's window began. The statute of limitations had been extended for sexual offenses against minors by a 1994 amendment to 18 U.S.C. § 3283 and revised again in 2003 to permit prosecution at any time during the lifetime of the minor victim [EFTA02731168, p. 20]. The 2020 indictment was reaching pre-NPA conduct through a statute written to allow it.

The Victim at the Center

The memo centers on a single named victim whose identity is redacted in the indexed version. The narrative establishes the facts the government intended to prove at trial. The victim had been born outside the United States and moved to the country with her family. She was approximately 14 years old when she first encountered Maxwell, sitting at a picnic table with friends, walking a dog past her [EFTA02731168, p. 0]. Epstein followed. He introduced himself as a donor who gave scholarships to students, and asked the victim for her phone number [EFTA02731168, pp. 0–1].

Several weeks later, a call came from Epstein's office inviting the victim to his Palm Beach house for tea. The victim and her mother went. Epstein told the mother that he liked to mentor young talented individuals and gave scholarships. The mother encouraged her daughter to spend time with him [EFTA02731168, p. 1]. The visits became regular. Epstein paid the victim \$200 to \$300 per visit in cash, told her to give the money to her mother, and also paid for the victim's training in her field of interest.

The memo records the victim's characterization of the early months of this pattern: she came to believe, in retrospect, that Maxwell and Epstein were "grooming" her for sexual abuse [EFTA02731168, p. 1]. The abuse itself began several months in, when the victim was alone with Epstein in the pool house.

That is the case the April memo was asking to charge. Maxwell's role, as the government intended to prove it, was not a bystander's. The memo identifies her as a participant in the grooming, a traveler with the victim across state lines, and a direct actor in at least one sexualized massage of the victim [EFTA02731168, p. 12].

What Came After

The April 10, 2020 memo is not the only Maxwell prosecution memorandum in the indexed record. It is the first of at least three. The second, dated April 28, 2020, is referenced inside the later superseding memo by date but has not been separately located under a clean EFTA identifier at time of publication; whatever it contained, it appears to have expanded the charging package from the 2 counts proposed on April 10 to the 6 counts of the original indictment actually returned. Maxwell was arrested on July 2, 2020.

The third indexed memo is EFTA02731226, 28 pages, dated March 14, 2021, captioned United States v. Maxwell, S2 20 Cr. 330 (AJN). It sought authorization for a superseding indictment expanding the charges to reach a further victim. That superseding indictment is the one under which Maxwell was tried in Manhattan in November and December 2021. The jury returned guilty verdicts on 5 of the 6 counts on December 29, 2021. She was sentenced on June 28, 2022 to 20 years of imprisonment.

The Gap the April Memo Closed

The 2007 Non-Prosecution Agreement extended federal immunity to Epstein and to his named co-conspirators for conduct in the 2001 to 2007 window. Maxwell was not named. Her conduct through the 1990s was not within the SDFL investigation's scope. When SDNY built a case around her in 2019 and 2020, it drew on victims and on a time period the NPA had never covered and therefore had never foreclosed.

The April memo is the clearest documentary illustration in the indexed record of what the NPA did not reach. It is the case that the other case (the one the NPA had resolved in September 2007) had not been built around. 12 years after the NPA was signed, and 8 months after Epstein's death, a separate U.S. Attorney's office in a separate district prosecuted the person the SDFL had not.

What the Record Does Not Show

The identity of the authors. The identity of the addressee (redacted). The identity of the central victim. The content of the April 28, 2020 follow-on memo, which appears to have expanded the charging package from 2 counts to 6 and whose EFTA identifier is not yet established. Whether any of the Section IV subjects A, B, or C of the December 2019 memo (EFTA02731082) were ever the subject of their own analogous separate prosecution memoranda. The internal correspondence between the December 2019 and April 2020 drafts.

Several Items Remain Open

The April 28, 2020 Maxwell prosecution memorandum, as a separately identified EFTA document. The analogous prosecution memoranda, if any, prepared by SDNY for the subjects of December-memo Section IV subsections A, B, and C. The original 6-count indictment (20 Cr. 330 (AJN)) filed July 2, 2020 as a public court record cross-referenced to these memos. The superseding indictment S2 20 Cr. 330 (AJN). The trial record and verdict form from December 2021. Those are the documents that extend this article into a full chronology of the SDNY prosecution.

The email arrived in Jeffrey Epstein's personal Gmail account on Sunday afternoon, October 15, 2017, 21 months before he would be arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges in New York. It had been forwarded from Noam Chomsky and carried a short question above his signature.

"Could you let us know whether this makes any sense? Especially about no withdrawals until '23. Impossible to live under that condition. Noam." ^{[EFTA00988381]}

Below the question was the email chain Chomsky was asking Epstein to evaluate: 6 weeks of correspondence between Chomsky, his wife Valeria, their accountants in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and a research associate at the Boston investment firm that handled his IRA distributions.

The question was about tax planning. Chomsky had taken $580,000 out of his retirement accounts in the first 9 months of 2017 ($513,000 from his own IRA and $67,000 from an inherited IRA), and none of it had been set aside for taxes. His accountants at Abrams Little-Gill Loberfeld PC were working through whether he should file as a full-year Massachusetts resident, a full-year Arizona resident, or a part-year resident in each, while the firm's lead on the file, Nick Nichols, worked out a recommendation for how to cover the year's tax liability without triggering further penalties.

Nichols's recommendation, laid out in a September letter forwarded inside the thread, was that Chomsky take no additional IRA distributions until October 23, 2023. A 6-year hold. ^{[EFTA00988381]}

The 2 sentences carrying Chomsky's objection to that hold were not composed as a reply to Nichols. They were part of the cover note Chomsky wrote to Jeffrey Epstein when he forwarded the chain.

Epstein's answer came back the same day.

"Ask for the money from thx trust." ^{[EFTA00988381]}

On September 29, 2018, at 11:03 p.m., Lawrence Krauss sent an email from his Arizona State University account to Jeffrey Epstein's personal Gmail address. A second name was on the To line: nancy dahl. The subject: "Document summarizing damages, and document with University Statement and proposed resolution-first drafts." Attached were two files, damages.docx and "Statement and Scenarios.docx." The body was 2 words. "First drafts:" ^{[EFTA01020499]}

In February 2018, BuzzFeed News published an investigation documenting sexual-misconduct allegations against Krauss, then Director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University. ASU opened an internal review. Krauss stepped down from the Origins Project directorship later that year. He retired from ASU in 2019. Krauss has publicly disputed the allegations.

This article is not about the merits of the allegations. It is about what the EFTA corpus shows of how Krauss prepared his response to ASU, and what role Jeffrey Epstein played in that preparation.

On the morning of March 20, 2015, a car pulled up to 10,000 Waves, a Japanese-style spa resort at 3451 Hyde Park Road in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The car was arranged by Jeffrey Epstein's Zorro Development Corp staff, acting on instructions coordinated by physicist Lawrence Krauss. The passengers were Noam Chomsky and his wife Valeria. Their destination was Jeffrey Epstein's ranch in Stanley, New Mexico, southeast of Santa Fe. ^{[EFTA02082749]}

The arrangement had been worked out by email the day before.

The invitation started with a ranch visit. On February 21, 2013, Jeffrey Epstein's executive assistant Lesley Groff emailed Mary Beth Brown, a senior staffer at SpaceX, with an invitation on Epstein's behalf:

"Hello Mary Beth...Jeffrey wanted to extend an invitation to Elon to visit him at his ranch this Sat. Feb. 23rd or Sun. Feb. 24th...his ranch is in Sante Fe, New Mexico... Otherwise, he says he will meet him at 1pm for lunch at Space X!" ^{[EFTA00395118]}

Brown replied a few hours later. Musk had LA commitments over that weekend. The Zorro Ranch offer was declined. The SpaceX lunch was confirmed for Monday February 25, 2013 at 1:00 p.m.

The email arrived in Lesley Groff's inbox on Friday April 26, 2013. It came from Melanie Spinella, identified by the signature block as "Assistant to Leon D. Black, Apollo Global Management, LP."

"Hi — Happy Friday! Leon and Debra are flying to Jeffrey's Ranch in Santa Fe on Sunday morning — I will let you know when they are landing — Jeffrey is having someone pick them up. Then Leon, Debra, Jeffrey and two others will fly from Santa Fe to LA (landing at Van Nuys airport — Maguire Aviation South) — I will let you know time so you can arrange a car for them. I need the names of the two going with Jeffrey — thanks!!!" ^{[EFTA02140568]}

Groff's reply was practical. She gave Spinella the names of the two additional passengers on Epstein's return flight. The names are redacted in the indexed corpus version. She also asked for the tail number of the Blacks' plane. Spinella: "Sure — Tail No. is N 624N."

Later that afternoon, Groff updated the Zorro Ranch staff: "ok thanks...Brice/Karen, make sure to coordinate with Larry on this heli ride!..don't want you driving to Santa Fe airport if they are taking a heli! Below is Leon's cell number in case you need it!" ^{[EFTA02140913]}

Epstein had arranged a helicopter to move Leon Black from the Santa Fe airport to the ranch. Larry Visoski, Epstein's personal pilot, was coordinating the onward flight from Santa Fe to Van Nuys.

The thread begins on July 30, 2012, with an email from Caitlin Wakefield at the Office of Governor Bill Richardson to Lesley Groff. Richardson had completed his second and final term as New Mexico governor in January 2011. His post-governorship office retained the "Office of Governor Bill Richardson" brand and kept Wakefield as staff.

Wakefield was writing to flag Richardson's upcoming Santa Fe schedule.

"Dear Leslie, Gov will be back in Santa Fe on August 6th & 7th and he wanted me to let you and Jeffrey know. He says that Woody Allen might be there at that time. Thanks, Caitlin." ^{[EFTA00407143]}

The email carried the Office of Governor Bill Richardson signature block and came from Wakefield's billrichardson.com address.

On September 24, 2007, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida signed a federal non-prosecution agreement with Jeffrey Epstein. The document never went to a grand jury, and it was never filed in federal court. The identified victims, some of whom were still girls at the time of the conduct at issue, would not learn the agreement existed until well after it had taken effect. Buried near the end of its text was a clause that extended federal immunity not only to Epstein himself, but to named and unnamed potential co-conspirators, a category the prosecutors never publicly closed.

It would be 12 years before a federal judge examined what had been signed. When Judge Kenneth Marra ruled, in February 2019, that the government had violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act in negotiating and concealing the deal ^{[EFTA00800253]}, Epstein was still alive and under no federal charge. Within months he would be arrested in New York; within weeks of that arrest, he would be dead in federal custody. The statute of limitations on most of the conduct the agreement shielded had already run. What follows is a reconstruction drawn from the record.