The U.S. government has moved to squash a lawsuit about the FBI’s failure to investigate early Jeffrey Epstein tips, arguing its agents were “not required to investigate every complaint” they heard.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kelsi Romero and Steven Petri filed the motion to dismiss on June 4. Their 21-page filing says decisions about whether and how to investigate a crime are up to federal law enforcement alone, and courts have no business second-guessing them.
“The Executive Branch has absolute discretion to decide whether to investigate and its decisions are not subject to judicial review,” the lawyers wrote. To say otherwise would “seriously handicap the FBI and other federal law-enforcement agencies.”
More than three dozen Epstein survivors filed the lawsuit in 2023, accusing the government of negligence. Their complaint centers on two phone calls the agency received in 1996 and 2005.
The first caller, Maria Farmer, said Epstein had sexually abused her and her teenage sister and was trafficking young girls. Internal FBI communications later revealed that agents moved her complaint to what the agency calls a “zero file,” meaning no one acted on it.
The second caller was, according to the lawsuit, Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner. He called the FBI in 2005 on behalf of Playboy Playmate Audra Christiansen, who said Epstein trafficked and abused her. The FBI told Hefner they would investigate but did not follow up for 15 years, finally reaching out to Christiansen in 2020.
The two calls “merely scratch the surface of the numerous ways” the FBI learned of Epstein’s abuse, wrote attorneys Jordan Merson and Todd Michaels. The lawyers pointed to 150 “suspicious activity reports” JPMorgan Chase flagged to federal authorities between 2002 and 2013, none of which generated a response from authorities.
“Never has the FBI nor Department of Justice violated its own mandatory rules or the American people’s trust more despicably than how they handled reports of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes,” Merson and Michaels wrote.
Lawsuit by Epstein victims is too late, government says
In their June 4 motion, Romero and Petri said the women needed to file the lawsuit within two years of their injury. The women’s abuse occurred between 1996 and 2017, but they didn’t lodge their complaint until May 2023.
The women, who are seeking more than $320 million in damages, say they didn’t connect the FBI’s failures to their injuries until a 2022 lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase brought new information to light, but prosecutors called that implausible.
They pointed to the plaintiffs’ own complaint, which cites a 2019 NBC News investigation, a 2020 DOJ inspector general report, a 2021 NPR broadcast and a 2021 book by Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown, all detailing the FBI’s handling of the Epstein case.
“Plaintiffs cannot ignore the decades of cultural saturation concerning the FBI’s investigation and claim they simply did not know,” the federal prosecutors wrote.
McCabe did not immediately rule.
Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. Reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Epstein victims can’t sue over ignored tips, government lawyers argue
Reporting by Hannah Phillips, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Hannah Phillips, Palm Beach Post | USA TODAY Network
