The lawyer who repped Jeffrey Epstein in his 2008 teen-prostitution plea deal maintained private ties with him, newly unsealed recordsdata present — and was later employed by Columbia College to battle the White Home.
Division of Justice paperwork on its probe into Epstein revealed that former Epstein lawyer Jay Lefkowitz stored a private relationship with the intercourse offender after his conviction, together with by tooling round on the millionaire financier’s personal helicopter, attending his dinner events and alluring Epstein to his son’s bar mitzvah, the Columbia Spectator scholar information outlet first reported.
Sufferer-rights teams stated they’re outraged that the beleaguered Ivy League establishment then nonetheless employed Lefkowitz to assist negotiate the varsity’s $221 million settlement with the Trump DOJ this previous summer season over civil-rights claims of discrimination towards Jewish college students.
“It’s completely not acceptable,’’ stated Erica Vladimer, co-founder of the Sexual Harassment Working Group.
“There are many attorneys on the market Columbia might have employed who don’t have a fame for defending youngster intercourse abusers,’’ she instructed The Publish.
Lefkowitz — a prestigious Columbia alum and lecturer and former Bush White Home lawyer — was one of many attorneys who negotiated Epstein’s controversial sex-case plea deal in Florida almost 20 years in the past.
Epstein was accused on the time of paying a 14-year-old lady $200 to provide him a therapeutic massage at his Palm Seaside mansion in 2005, with him utilizing a vibrator on her whereas he masturbated.
Epstein averted federal expenses — which might have seen him face life in jail — and as a substitute obtained an 18-month state jail sentence by pleading responsible to 1 depend of soliciting prostitution and one depend of soliciting prostitution for somebody below the age of 18.
He was capable of go on “work launch” to his workplace for 12 hours a day, six days per week whereas doing his time. He was launched on probation after 13 months.
Right here’s the most recent on the discharge of the Epstein recordsdata
Many critics thought of the sentence a slap on the wrist.
Epstein was so thrilled with the lover plea deal that he gave Lefkowitz and others on his authorized dream crew an added bonus: almost $1 million value of donations to their favourite charities, together with a tony Manhattan prep faculty, The Publish wrote in 2019.
Epstein’s C.O.U.Q. nonprofit donated $500,000 in 2007 to the Ramaz College on the Higher East Aspect, the place Lefkowitz was a outstanding member of the varsity’s Orthodox Jewish neighborhood.
Within the Columbia case, a number of the faculty’s Jewish college students stated they had been compelled to endure excessive antisemitism on campus because the Oct. 7, 2023, assaults by Palestinian terrorists on Israel and ensuing Gaza conflict, prompting the White Home to tackle the varsity, which ended up settling for the whopping quantity.
Appearing Columbia President Claire Shipman was grilled about Lefkowitz’s and different Columbia associates’ ties to Epstein throughout a college Senate assembly final month.
Throughout questioning, College senator and professor of writing Susan Bernofsky requested Shipman to “decide to fee an impartial overview of the Columbia affiliated people who had been extra significantly entangled with Epstein, as is popping out,’’ in accordance with the Spectator.
Bernofsky particularly introduced up Lefkowitz.
Shipman stated on the time it was “untimely” to deal with the Columbia-Epstein connections however that it could be completed at a future assembly, the outlet stated.
A Columbia rep declined remark to The Publish about Lefkowitz’s ties to Epstein or whether or not it was acceptable to nominate him to signify the college in a civil-rights case.
The consultant additionally declined touch upon whether or not Columbia paid Lefkowitz or his agency, Kirkland & Ellis, for his work and in that case, how a lot.
Lefkowitz declined remark.
He’s an achieved and well-connected lawyer.
Lefkowitz held quite a few positions within the administrations of each former presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
He was additionally lively within the motion to permit Soviet Jews to to migrate to the U..and has completed professional bono work, together with difficult New Yorkers much-criticized trainer tenure regulation on behalf of fogeys and has represented Success Academy, town’s largest constitution faculty community.
