Defending Democracy

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are looking to question private investigators in Florida who removed and later stored computers retrieved from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s home in Palm Beach in 2005.

In a video shared Friday afternoon, Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the panel, said he has sent letters to three private investigators “demanding that we have access to these hard drives.” His letters also ask that the three men “preserve and not alter, delete, destroy, or otherwise dispose of any and all documents, communications, materials, and electronically stored information (ESI) that may be relevant to Jeffrey Epstein or the Committee’s investigation,” and set the deadline for their response for April 9.

“There could be critical information about what Jeffrey Epstein did, what he recorded, how he blackmailed people all in these videos and files,” Garcia said.

The California lawmaker cited correspondence within the recently released Epstein files –– as well as a deposition the committee conducted last week – for bringing the whereabouts of the electronics to the committee’s attention.

In an October 2005 memo included in the DOJ’s massive trove of records related to its probes into Epstein, private investigator William Riley wrote to defense attorney Roy Black that another investigator removed three computers along with some 100 other items from Epstein’s home and turned everything over to Riley.

In addition to the two Dell computers and an HP model taken from the waterfront mansion, the investigator noted he retrieved 29 telephone directories, several photos of nude females, a Harvard University ID card, a Florida concealed weapons permit, various sex toys and undergarments, and several dozen VHS tapes — the majority of which included titles indicating that they were pornography.

In the correspondence, Riley said that the investigator Paul Lavery had “removed items of potential evidentiary value” from Epstein's home “pursuant to the instructions” of Black, and that the items were all handed over to Riley “for inventory and safekeeping purposes.”

In letters to Riley, Lavery as well as Riley’s partner, ​​Stephen Kiraly, Garcia said that when Palm Beach police raided Epstein’s home in 2007, the three computers referenced in the memo from two years earlier were "conspicuously missing.”

Another document retrievable in the publicly searchable Epstein database appears to include a copy of the subpoena that federal prosecutors in Florida sent to the private investigators, seeking “All computer equipment and electronic storage media removed” from Epstein’s residence, as well as any electronics that the financier owned and documents detailing the work the investigators did for Epstein.

Additional records show efforts by attorneys for the investigators and Epstein to quash the subpoenas and block their testimony before a grand jury in 2007. Months later, Epstein cut a deal that allowed him to avoid federal charges and instead plead guilty to state charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution.

Attempts to reach Riley and Kiraly, both former Miami police officers, as well as Lavery for comment were not successful Friday.

“It’s stunning that Jeffrey Epstein’s computers and hard drives were in the possession of Epstein’s private investigators and may never have been seen by any law enforcement agency,” Garcia said in a statement.

A request made to the Justice Department about the past and present whereabouts of the computers and their respective hard drives was not immediately returned.

But a search of the serial numbers listed for the computers in the DOJ’s publicly released records returned photos of at least one hard drive that appears to have been cataloged in the government’s 2021 index list of exhibits for the trial of Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell. The computer's serial number noted in the 2005 memo appears handwritten on a folder next to the hard drive when it was photographed as evidence.

Additional requests made to Garcia's office and the Justice Department about the image were not immediately returned as well.

Garcia said that Epstein’s former attorney, Darren Indyke, confirmed to the committee during his closed-door deposition last week that private investigators had taken possession of the hard drives from the financier’s home.

Indyke is a co-executor of Epstein’s estate along with Richard Kahn, Epstein’s former accountant, who was also deposed by the House Oversight Committee last week. Both men denied being aware of wrongdoing by Epstein, who died by suicide in his New York City jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Authorities believe that Epstein abused more than 1,000 girls and young women over several decades.

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