← The Epstein Chronicles
The Epstein Chronicles
Lesley Groff and the Administrative Backbone of Epstein’s World (Part 3) (5/29/26)
00:23:42
Lesley Groff was Jeffrey Epstein’s longest-serving and most senior assistant, working for him from 2001 until his 2019 arrest, and the newly examined records place her closer to his daily life than almost anyone else in the Epstein files. Her name...
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What's up everyone? And welcome to another episode of the Epstein Chronicles. In this episode, we're going to get right back to the article about Leslie Groff that was published in the Guardian, and the author is Sophie Elmhurst. The first time that Grof's name appeared in legal documents connected to Epstein's crimes was in the secret plea deal he made with the state Attorney's office in South Florida. In return for federal immunity and immunity for various assistance, including Grof, Epstein agreed to plead guilty in 2008-2 low level state charges, which included the charge of solicitation of minors to engage in prostitution. And she still kept working for him after all that. So please spare me the nonsense. It's one thing to try and tell us that you had no idea who he was or what he was, and then it's a whole ass other thing to keep working for him when that mask has already been ripped off. And I think that's the biggest problem for people like Roth, Kellen Vickers, and Adriana Ross. I mean, it's a big deal. When I asked Groff's lawyer, Michael Bauchner, about her knowledge of the 2008 conviction, he replied, After Epstein's arrest in 2008, he continuously lied to Leslie and other members of the staff, insisting that he had been blackmailed and set up. He angrily said that the allegations against him were simply false and he had no idea that the prostitute he had contact with was was a minor. In Leslie's mind, that was the reason that he was treated so leniently by law enforcement before and after he was sentenced. Oh, well, that is pretty convenient, huh? And have you noticed everybody's just blaming Epstein now that he's dead. They have no problem pointing the finger at Epstein when he was alive, though nobody said nobody had the courage to come forward then, but now, well, I don't want to get in trouble. So it was him, not me. And it's the same kind of defense that Sarah Kellen Vickers is trying to use over the subsequent Years, Groff has continued to work for Epstein. She was made aware of the controversy around the plea deal's terms. On March 25, 2011, her husband Ike emailed her a link to a story in the Daily Beast, Jeffrey Epstein, how the hedge fund mogul pedophile got off easy. Groff replied, yeah, he told me yesterday this would be in the Daily Beast. And one thing I'll say about the Daily Beast is that they continuously reported on Epstein even before it was popular to do so. So certainly a tip of the cap to them for that. Now, does that mean everything they do I agree with? Of course not. But when it comes to their Epstein reporting, especially Kate Bricklet, they did a really good job. And when other outlets were running from this story, the Deli Beast was running stories about it. And they were also calling out Epstein at the time, which a lot of other people weren't willing to do. Then in 2017, a case was brought by the author Sarah Ransom, who alleged that she had been abused by Epstein and this abuse had been facilitated by Maxwell Groff and two other staff members. Later that year, Ransom withdrew the case against Groff and the other staff and reached a settlement with Epstein and the and Maxwell the following year. And that's how it always worked out. Always a settlement, never discovery and never any real evidence being produced. And that was all by design, all of that. And that's why when Maxwell ended up going to discovery with Virginia, I was blown away. I was honestly shocked that it progressed that far. But I think at the time, Maxwell was between a rock and a hard place. She had said for so long that Virginia was a liar she had to put up. But her lawsuit with Virginia led directly to Maxwell being convicted, and it also opened the door for everything we're seeing now. Grof continued to work for Epstein until his arrest in 2019. In his will, written two days before his death on August 10, 2019, he put his estate into a trust to be distributed among various friends and relations with. With most $50 million going to his last partner, Corinna Schuliac. Smaller sums were assigned to Maxwell, 10 million, his brother, his pilot, and various other staff members. Grof was listed in a clause under the subheading, after my death, I forgive any loans which I made to the following individuals or entities. Leslie Catherine Groff. After Epstein's death, Grof was named in in several lawsuits, including those brought by anonymous victims in 2019 and 2021, that were later dismissed as a condition for receiving money from the Epstein Victims Compensation Program. Survivors were barred from pursuing any legal action against epstein's estate or former employees. By the time it closed in 2021, the program had awarded 121 million to 135 survivors. Now think about that. Not even a million each. Now, of course, some people got more and some people got less, But Jeffrey epstein's fortune was what, 540something million? And you're only doling out a fifth of that to the people who were harmed the most. I thought it was disgusting then, and I still think so now. And I gotta tell you, I would have never accepted that offer ever. If I was somebody who was abused. No way I would have went to the mattresses. Especially after finding out that the virgin islands, the u. S. Virgin islands, Got more money than all the girls together combined. Imagine that. They were allegedly culpable for helping epstein. So they ate at one end of the table, and then after dinner was done, they went and ate at the other. But these survivors have been maligned and said they're just chasing a payday. Not really the kind of payday that people are thinking here. Groff's name also appeared in FBI interviews conducted in 2019 and 2021. In the 2021 interview, the victim, who was under 18 at the time, Described how groff arranged her appointments with epstein, which were massages that turned sexual right away. She thought it was pretty obvious. Leslie knew what was going on, Though she never said anything to grof about the massages. And look, I've heard that from several different people, but it's very hard to prove, and unless you're charging rico here, Then I don't think you have enough to go on, Certainly not enough to get a conviction. She would tell groff if a friend couldn't make it and suggest other girls. Groff, she said, also arrange payment from epstein to cover an abortion and payments to cover accommodation when she was staying at hotels. She said that grof told her that she couldn't get an apartment as she was not yet 18. So Grof knew she was underage, Sending her to go get abortions. All kinds of really. And you have no idea. You have no culpability. Sorry, I don't buy it. The most prominent of the cases nemeng groff, Was a civil suit brought by jennifer arreos against epstein's escape after his death. Arro said that she had been abused and raped by epstein in his home when she was 14 and 15 years old. In her complaint, Arro's attorney, daniel Kaiser, claimed that Ms. Groff directly facilitated as well as conspired with Epstein and other co conspirators to make possible and otherwise facilitate the sexual offenses committed against minor plaintiff Ms. Arreos. And that's the RICO right. Have all these people working in coordination to commit crimes, and those crimes are benefiting Jeffrey Epstein directly. And from there, it all rains down on everybody else. This is not that difficult. But the whole entire point was never to charge this as a criminal enterprise. They always wanted to piece it off. They wanted to go after Epstein as a singular dude. That way they can have a nice storyline for us about how he was just a sick guy with proclivities and all the other stuff was just a bunch of bs. In response, Groff's lawyers, John Whitcomb and Michael Bauchner, argued that Arreos had confused Grof with someone else. The alleged crimes had been committed at Epstein's house at a time when Grof wasn't based there. Grof's job, they said, did not include arranging sexual liaisons with underage girls. In fact, they argued Groff was an innocent party who had been wrongfully maligned for years based upon sheer speculation, conjecture, and innuendo. If she were for Jeffrey Epstein, she ipso facto must have known he was abusing teenage girls and must have participated therein. They emphasized one key point. She didn't know. Well, look, I'm not saying she abused anybody physically. I've never seen that evidence. I'm saying she's part of the problem, part of the machine, part of the RICO organization that Epstein was running. On December 1, 2020, the case was dismissed. Arreos had withdrawn because of the conditions set by the compensation program, Declared her lawyer. We're not surprised that the civil case has been dropped since Leslie found out about these inexplicable crimes when the rest of the world did, said Bauchner at the time. As a wife and a mother, Leslie remains heartbroken for Jennifer and all the victims, added Whitcomb. So heartbroken she never came forward. So heartbroken she never ratted on Jeffrey Epstein. But don't worry, everybody. Leslie Groff, she was heartbroken. When I asked Buckner about the allegations in all the civil suits naming Groff, he said that they were simply wrong, confused, and devoid of any facts establishing that she had any idea of Epstein's horrible and nefarious conduct. In fact, in some instances, the conclusory conduct alleged against her occurred years before Leslie was even employed by Mr. Epstein. We note that every civil case against Leslie was dismissed, and she never paid a cent towards a settlement. Cool. So she'll have no problem removing herself from the npa, right? Go to the lawyers, go to the court and say, look, I don't need that protection of the mpa. Drop it. I want to tell my story. Doubt she's going to do that. Although all the civil cases were dropped, Grof was still under criminal investigation. But In December of 2021, Whitcomb and Bachner stated that after a two year investigation, federal prosecutors had decided not to bring any charges against her because Epstein was dead. They couldn't go any further. What are they going to do? If you don't have Epstein, you don't have anything.
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In her lawyer's depiction, Grof did nothing, saw nothing and knew nothing. Her ignorance was so total that it seemed to take on solid form, enclosing her like a reinforced steel chamber built to withstand attack. Yeah, that sounds about right. Complicity is elusive and slippery, not easily witnessed or proved. The accomplice is not the leading actor, but a figure in the shadows. In his book Implicit, the Berkeley professor of law, Christopher Cutts describes how an individual can only be charged with a crime of complicity, co conspiracy or aiding and abetting, say, if their actions independently meet criteria of criminality. Prosecutors have decided that Grof's actions were not crimes in themselves because they didn't charge RICO. How do you miss that? Did Mr. Cutts not talk about that in his book? If Grof's complicity is no longer a criminal matter, it remains an ethical one. Grof and the team of pilots, drivers, lawyers and accountants allowed Epstein machine to run with frictionless continuity. Every individual involved in his life, however small, their tasks contributed to its operation and its effects. The concept of individual moral accountability is too limited. Rights cuts when so many serious harms are brought about by multiple people working together. But that doesn't absolve the individual. Something being a collective responsibility does not entail that. It's not an individual responsibility. Well, no, they all have their role to play. They all play their roles. They. They did it well, and they all did it in furtherance of the criminal enterprise. And if that's not rico, I have no idea what is. Graften was one of many enablers of Epstein. Enabling abuse is not a crime. But Amos Gorya, a law professor at the University of Utah, is now lobbying multiple countries to make it one. Gouria is the son of Holocaust survivors. His first book was about the concept of the bystander, the person who watches a crime take place in front of them and does nothing, such as those who taunted his father with water while he was on a death march in the former Yugoslavia. We already have these laws. I don't know what this author is talking about. Rico. That's what it was created for. Look up the statutes, please. In his second book, Armies of Enablers, he wrote about how those enabled the sexual abuse perpetrated by, among others, the United States national team, gymnastics coach Larry Nassar at Michigan State University and Catholic priests in Boston. In every case, there were people who allowed the abuse to continue, either by protecting the abuser, the institution, or ignoring victims reports. They knew what was happening, even if they never witnessed it taking place and did nothing. For Guerra, Grof is a classic case. If she was making appointments and booking flights, she was enabling. All this shit can't happen without her. In that sense, she was very like the leaders in Catholic Church or the university administrators who put their loyalty to their institutions over the duty to a victim. This is all incorrect. Those were institutions, right? Epstein was running a criminal enterprise. It wasn't the Catholic Church. Everything that was happening was benefiting Epstein directly. And all these lieutenants and all these people played their part to to make that happen. No different from the Mafia. The only difference was that in Grof's case, said Goria, her institution was Jeffrey Epstein. When asked what Grof knew of Epstein's crimes, Bauchner said, it's our strong position that Epstein purposefully kept Leslie isolated from his criminal conduct, since he had no reason to confide in her and every reason to lie. Epstein lived in two worlds, one legitimate and the other not, and made sure they did not collide. Leslie now realizes that Epstein made her a face of his legitimate world. It's no wonder she was included on so many emails. Yo, these people are seriously demented. Leslie Groff is no victim here. I'm sorry, she is not. For some of Epstein's victims, Grof's behavior speaks for itself. She was the person who arranged their appointments but booked their flights and paid their money. They were all deeply involved. Rena oh told me they can't deny they were enabling. Juliet Bryant wondered if Groff and her colleagues convinced themselves that the girls were models visiting from overseas rather than entertain the idea that Epstein had constructed a system of international sex trafficking. More likely, she thought Groff knew something was going on but chose not to think about it. A lot of people don't ask questions. Doesn't mean you're not culpable. Is your name on it? Did you send the emails? Did you set the girls up? Sorry. Culpable. Among Groff's emails are hundreds between her and Ike, which reveal a wholesome domestic life far removed from the incessant demands of her work. They plan dinners and discuss house renovations, the bank loan, and decisions about paint colors and window styles. They figure out play dates, football practice timings, and summer camps for their son and worry about how much time he's spending on social media. Grof comes across as a mother devoted to her child in the ordinary, consuming way, and that makes it worse, in my opinion. Your kid gets doted on while other kids are abused. Way to go, mom. She worked from home when she could to have more time with him and made sure she was home for the day that he started the third grade. In an email to a pregnant former colleague, Groff tells her to enjoy and every minute as it was the best, best, best part of my life. Time passed so quickly, and she found herself crying when she looked at photos of her son when he was little. Having a child was, she wrote, the most amazing thing you will ever experience. Hey, Leslie, quick question. Do you think that the families, the parents of the survivors, felt any different? Maybe you should have thought about those kids when your boss was doing what your boss was doing. After a while, clicking on email after email, I felt I was reading things I shouldn't. I found myself in the private enclosure of Grof's mind, her family and home. The details of a life she kept separate from her job. The train she was going to take home, the burgers she'd make, the voluntary work she wanted her son to take part in. And yet, reading these intimacies also revealed the extent to which someone can divide their life in two. It's possible to have everyday concerns, to care deeply for the people you love, and to willingly work for a terrible man who does terrible things. There was Nothing exceptional or particular about Grof that made her able to do this. Anyone could have had their CV plucked from a pile and done exactly as she did. We like to think from the safety of not being in her position that we would have done things differently. But the capacity to close our eyes to the horror is surely near universal. The fuck it is. I've spent every day for the last seven years railing about this, and I promise you I'm not making money. Not like Leslie Groff. So save the every woman act for somebody else. That's a bunch of bs. And yet there's still the question of why she did it for so long. When I put this question to Bochner, he replied, although Leslie considered resigning, liked to manipulate, and he persuaded her to stay, she was awestruck by the quality of the company that continued to surround Epstein after his conviction, including heads of state, philanthropists, scientists, philosophers, past and present, elected officials, and men of women of universal approbation. That's always the excuse. Everybody else was doing it, so I might as well, too. I don't buy that either. Go garbage. Save it. Regrettably, Leslie, like so many others, was misled by Epstein and those complicit with him. Later in the statement, Bauchner added, leslie wishes she had never met Epstein and that she had resigned. Instead, her life has been turned upside down, including being viciously threatened simply for doing her job as a secretary for a con man who intentionally misled her and kept her isolated from his criminal conduct. Listen, nobody should be threatening Leslie Grof or anybody else. The idea is to force the government into action. That's the idea. Whatever Grof knew, it seemed she seriously questioned what Epstein was doing or her part in it. Perhaps, as Grof performed her role as social prosthesis, she felt her actions no longer belonged to her, but were simply an execution of his will. It didn't matter what she thought of about what she did, because it was not her job to think, only to enact his desires. This is not to excuse what she did or didn't do, but an attempt to understand how someone can split themselves between two moral planes. To understand how someone who worries about the amount of time their child spends on their phone might spend years arranging girls. To see a man convicted of abusing children and understand why, in all that time, she didn't walk away. Are you for real? Let me help you out. Money. That's why. Money. That's what it all comes down to. When Grof goes to Washington on June 9, she will not be the first of Epstein's former employees to appear in front of the House committee. His accountant, Richard Kahn, and lawyer Darren Endyke were both interviewed in early March. Kahn said he made the wrong decision in continuing to work for Epstein after 2008, but there was a financial crisis and he had a family to support. Money, like usual. That's what they'll all say. Money, money, money, money. Indyk said he had no knowledge whatsoever of Jeffrey Epstein's wrongdoings while he was working for him. Khan also spoke of the toll it had taken on his family, said his reputation had been dragged through the mud, a situation that did not seem to elicit great sympathy. A Democratic representative, James Walkinshaw, accused Khan of being willfully ignorant. That's being nice. That's being nice. I'm sorry. You can't be as close to Epstein as Indyke and Khan were and not know I'm climbing all the way to the top of Mount Everest and screaming bullshit for that one. The interviews offered no great revelation or catharsis, but they did paint a picture of the odd suspended existence of all those closely connected to Epstein who have evaded formal accountability. They might never be found guilty of a crime, but they can't escape the shadow of association with the man. They live instead in the purgatory of undefined suspicion, where the best that can be hoped for is the impossible. A life out of sight, their names forgotten, the past rewritten. Or maybe just come forward and tell everybody what you know. It's wild that they think anyone's going to feel sorry for these people. During her last weeks of working for Epstein, Groff handled the usual range of tasks. Flights were booked for redacted from San Francisco to Hong Kong. A propane delivery to Epstein's island needed chasing. There was a back and forth on who was keeping a copy of some boat logs. Groff wasn't sure of the necessity of this, but the fact Jeffrey asked about it means something. On July 5, 2019, Grof emailed Epstein and various colleagues about a man called Pokey who was supposed to have arrived on the island. He said he could be there 7:00am Last we heard, she wrote. Can you confirm? Epstein, meanwhile, emailed Grof and others complaining about malfunctioning windows, which were meant to swivel past each other so the entire window was open. The next day, Epstein would fly on his private jet from Paris to Teterboro, New Jersey, where he was arrested on charges of sex trafficking minors. There was no sign in the emails as Groff worried about Poki's no show that her boss, entire criminal edifice, was on the verge of collapse. It was just another day with a mixture of administrative demands and the endless effort to make one man's life unfold minute to minute, exactly as he wished. Another employee replied to say that Poky wasn't answering his phone. Groff, not one to back down from pressing tasks in front of her boss, issued an instruction. Keep trying. So, look, folks, I get it. Leslie Groff certainly wasn't abusing anybody, and I've never thought that. But if you look at it through the lens of rico, there is no doubt that she was complicit. But unfortunately, this is not a RICO case. And considering that, I don't see how they could charge Leslie Groff with anything, really. So it's going to be interesting to see what she has to say when she appears before Congress, but I just don't know how far they're going to be able to get when it comes to trying to get to the bottom of what was going on. So it's going to be interesting to see what she has to say when she makes her appearance before Congress and, like usual, will be right here every step of the way. All the information that goes with this episode can be found in the description box.