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From: Darren Indyke
Sent: 3/14/2019 4:30:53 PM
To: jeeyacation@gmail.com
CC: Darren Indyke_____________________________________
Subject: Epstein prosecutor was rebuked for prior child sex case I Miami Herald
Attachments: Sp_Marie_Villafana2.jpg; WilliamZloch.jpeg; acosta.jpg
Importance: High
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article226765309.html
Jeffrey Epstein prosecutor was
previously rebuked for handling of a
child sex case
Julie K. Brown
Nine months before cutting a covert plea deal with sex trafficking suspect Jeffrey
Epstei , Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta was notified that the lead
prosecutor in Epstein's case had concealed victim information in another underage
sex crimes case, the Miami Herald has learned.
The prosecutor, A. Marie Villafaria, was harshly rebuked by a federal judge in
January 2007 for what he called her "intentional and/or serious lapse in judgment"
when she failed to explicitly inform him that the defendant, a Texas man who
traveled to Florida to have sex with a 14-year-old girl, had a prior history of
predatory behavior with minors, court records show.
Acosta, her boss at the time, not only knew about Villafaria's breach — records show
that he subsequently defended it. Acosta assigned another prosecutor in his office to
write a treatise for the judge in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade him to soften
the stinging language in his order.
Senior U.S. District Court Judge William J. Zloch copied Acosta on his order,
noting, "The court is at a total loss as to why the Office of the United States Attorney
for the Southern District of Florida, as well as the Assistant United States Attorney
assigned to the above-styled cause, found it appropriate to intentionally withhold ...
information from the court."
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A. Marie Villafaria was the lead federal prosecutor in the Jeffrey Epstein sex case. The U.S. attorney's office's handling of
the prosecution, which led to a plea to minor charges in state court, has been harshly criticized.
Later that year, Acosta and Villafaria put together a plea bargain for Epstein, a
multimillionaire money manager who sexually abused nearly three dozen teenage
girls at his mansion in Palm Beach. The deal, a federal judge ruled last month, was
intentionally kept from his victims in violation of the Crime Victims' Rights Act.
While the two cases are unrelated, it shows that both Acosta and Villafaria had been
warned about the importance of victim disclosure in sex crimes cases before the
Epstein agreement. They nevertheless forged ahead with a pact with Epstein that
violated the law.
U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth A. Marra wrote: "When the Government gives
information to victims, it cannot be misleading. While the Government spent untold
hours negotiating the terms and implications of the [agreement] with Epstein's
attorneys, scant information was shared with victims."
This comes as Acosta, who is now the U.S. secretary of labor, is facing mounting
scrutiny for his oversight of the Epstein case. On Monday, White House press
secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to say whether President Trump has full
confidence in Acosta, noting that Acosta's involvement in the Epstein case is
GG
currently under review."
The Justice Department launched a probe in January into whether Acosta, Villafaria
and other prosecutors committed professional misconduct.
Francey Hakes, who worked in the Justice Department's Crimes Against Children
unit, said Zloch's comments were so brutal that it should have deterred Acosta and
Villafaria from keeping the deal secret.
"It is highly unusual for a court to allege an assistant U.S. attorney has intentionally
withheld information. That allegation is like dropping a bomb in the legal
community," she said.
The story behind a Palm Beach sex offender's remarkable deal
Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein is a free man, despite sexually abusing
dozens of underage girls according to police and prosecutors. His victims have never
had a voice, until now.
"It seems to show that they are not taking these cases very seriously, they are not
advocating for strong punishment for sexual predators, and not advocating for
victims in a meaningful way."
Villafaria, a well-regarded 18-year veteran federal prosecutor, would not comment
for this story. But her lawyer, Jonathan Biran, said she has worked tirelessly on
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behalf of crime victims. She received the 2011 National Crime Victims' Rights
Service Award as well as the Attorney General's Project Safe Childhood Award.
He also pointed out that the parents of the victim in the Texas man's case wrote a
letter thanking Villafaria at the conclusion of the case.
"AUSA Villafaria has spent her 18-year career advocating tirelessly on behalf of
victims of some of the most serious crimes in Florida, and has received numerous
awards for her successful prosecution of major cases," Biran said, adding that
Villafaria has "made South Florida a safer place for children and adults alike."
Enticing a minor
By all accounts, Adam McDaniel was an awkward and shy Texas teenager who spent
countless hours on his computer, socializing with girls on the internet.
In 2005, McDaniel, then 19, traveled from Texas to Fort Lauderdale, where he
hopped into a taxi and headed to Boca Raton to meet up with a 14-year-old girl he
had been talking to online for about a year. He picked up the ninth grader at a high
school basketball game, and drove her to a Marriott, hotel where they spent the
night, court records show.
When she failed to come home that evening, her parents called Boca Raton police.
Officers tracked the pair down at the hotel the next day, where they found them in
bed, clad in little more than their underwear, according to court records.
McDaniel was arrested on federal sex charges, and pleaded guilty on Oct. 6, 2006, to
enticing a minor into sexual conduct by means of interstate commerce, which
carried a sentence of from five years up to 30 years in federal prison.
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U.S. District Judge William Zloch
At sentencing, McDaniel's public defender, Patrick Hunt, argued for a reduced
sentence, blaming his client's immaturity for the crime. McDaniel had been a good
student at Texas Tech and had a family that supported him, Hunt told Zloch.
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Family and acquaintances, including a former Fort Worth police lieutenant,
submitted letters to the court vouching for McDaniel's character.
There were other issues, however, presented to the judge. While McDaniel was
being held in federal lockup awaiting sentencing, he had corresponded with his
victim, despite being ordered not to contact her, the court record shows.
Still, Hunt argued that a sentence of five years was overly harsh.
Villafaria disagreed, but conceded that McDaniel would benefit from psychological
treatment. She advocated for a sentence of five to sex years, which was at the low
end of the guideline.
It was then that the judge heard from the victim's mother.
In a statement, the mother decried the emotional and mental trauma her daughter
suffered and the long road to recovery she had ahead of her. The mother mentioned
she was further upset that McDaniel continued contact with her daughter after his
arrest and she said she believed that McDaniel was still trying to manipulate her
daughter by blaming her for his arrest.
The mother pointed out that prior to their sexual encounter, McDaniel had directed
her daughter to watch sexually explicit movies and had described for her sex
activities he had had with another underage girl.
At that point, the judge interrupted.
"...There has been some reference to another incident with a minor girl. What do
you know about that, if anything?" Zloch asked Villafaria.
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Former U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta never told sexual-abuse victims of a lenient plea
deal for Jeffrey Epstein.
Getty Images
Only then did Zloch learn that McDaniel had preyed on other girls over the internet,
including a 16-year-old California girl whom he brought to Texas and impregnated.
He was also having another relationship with a 15-year-old girl at the time of his
arrest, Villafaria admitted in court.
The judge promptly sentenced McDaniel to 10 years — twice what Villafaria
recommended.
Three months later, in January 2007, after reviewing the entire case, Zloch issued
an order excoriating Villafaria for failing to tell him about McDaniel's prior history.
"The serial nature of defendant's seduction of minor girls was revealed for the first
time to the court upon the Government's response to the Court's inquiry," Zloch
wrote, explaining that the defendant's past was evidence of predatory behavior that
warranted a harsher sentence because he may pose a danger to the community.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Lourie was assigned to try to correct the record and
persuade the judge to strike a portion of his comments. They argued that since
McDaniel had never before been charged with a crime, the history was not relevant
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at sentencing. The defendant's prior relationship with a 16-year-old was not illegal
in Texas or in California, they said, and the girl classified her relationship as a
friendship.
All the relevant information was provided to the probation department and at
McDaniel's detention hearing, they added, making the point that it was in the record
and therefore, not intentionally withheld by the government.
While Zloch conceded that the information was part of the probation and bond
hearing record, he said it was nevertheless the U.S. Attorney's Office's duty to
present the defendant's prior history with minors at sentencing. He refused to strike
the most critical portions of his order.
"Lack of candor to the court is a serious charge, and the judge has quite reasonably
expressed dismay that the assistant U.S. attorney apparently intended that he never
be given a full picture of the defendant's conduct," Hakes said.
But nine months later, in September 2007, Villafaria was in the throes of thorny
negotiations with Epstein's lawyers. While an FBI investigation was ongoing,
Villafaria discussed ways to quietly resolve the case, emails show.
A Miami Herald investigation, -Perversion of Justice," published in November,
revealed how federal prosecutors, including Acosta and Villafaria, tried to keep the
full scope of Epstein's crimes out of the public eye. At one point, they discussed
charging Epstein in Miami, instead of Palm Beach where the crimes happened,
noting there would be less media coverage.
Emails also show that prosecutors repeatedly abided by Epstein's lawyers' demands
that his victims not be told that an agreement had been reached until after he was
sentenced. That meant that the girls could not appear at the hearing to derail the
deal. Prosecutors had drafted a 53-page federal indictment on sex trafficking
charges, but Acosta instead allowed Epstein to plead guilty to two prostitution
charges in state court. In exchange, Epstein and his co-conspirators were given
federal immunity.
Villafaria wrote Epstein's lawyer, Jay Lefkowitz, to discuss the wording of the
sentencing agreement for the judge:
"I will include all our standard language regarding resolving all criminal liability and
I will mention co-conspirators, but I would prefer not to highlight for the judge all of
the other crimes and all the other persons we could charge," Villafaria wrote.
At Epstein's sentencing, assistant Palm Beach prosecutor Lanna Belohlavek was
questioned by the judge about whether all of Epstein's victims were told about the
deal, as required by law.
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"Are there more than one victim?" Circuit Court Judge Deborah Dale Pucillo asked
Belohlavek at the June 30, 2008 sentencing.
"There's several," Belohlavek replied.
"Are all the victims in both these cases in agreement with the terms of the plea?" the
judge asked.
"Yes," Belohlavek said.
Coincidentally, the lawyer representing one of the victims was in the courtroom that
day. He told the Herald that neither he, nor his client, was told about the agreement.
Acosta has not responded to the Herald's repeated requests for comment. A
spokesman at the Labor Department told the Washington Post last month: "The
office's decisions were approved by departmental leadership and followed
departmental procedures."
In the past, Acosta has said that he believed the deal was the best chance
prosecutors had of ensuring that Epstein spent some time behind bars and was
required to register as a sex offender. Epstein served 13 months in the Palm Beach
County jail — but he was allowed to leave for up to 12 hours a day as part of a work
release program not normally offered to convicted sex offenders.
Epstein's victims, now in their late 20S and 30s, are fighting to have his deal
overturned and Epstein sent to prison.
Bradley Edwards, who represents several of Epstein's victims, defended Villafaria,
saying he believed that she was directed to settle the case and not inform Epstein's
victims about the deal.
"In my conversations with her, I came to believe that she was in a difficult position.
She never came out and said this, but I suspected that someone above her directed
her to do what she did," Edwards said.
DARREN K. INDYKE
5300 W. Atlantic Avenue, Suite 602
Delray Beach Florida 33484
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