Lesley Groff

Lesley Groff is an American former executive assistant to Jeffrey Epstein, who worked for him in his New York office for more than eighteen years, from 2001 until she resigned after his arrest in July 2019. She is one of the four women named in the co-conspirator clause of Epstein's September 2007 non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida, a clause she has called her "scarlet letter." Victims have said she scheduled their appointments with Epstein; she has denied any knowledge of his crimes and has never been charged.¹²

Employment

Groff began working for Epstein in February 2001, at the age of 35, as his executive secretary at a salary of 50,000 dollars, replacing his previous assistant. She told congressional investigators that she answered to Epstein alone. From 2001 to 2009 she worked at Epstein's offices at 457 Madison Avenue, entered through the Villard House in the courtyard of the Helmsley Palace hotel, where her office adjoined his; the suite also held the offices of Epstein's lawyers Darren Indyke and Jeff Schantz, his accountants, first Eric Gany and then Richard Kahn, Harry Beller, whom she understood to be his trader, the controller Emad Hanna, and Ghislaine Maxwell, with whom she described her relationship as "purely professional." She then worked at 301 East 66th Street, at an office on Lexington Avenue from about 2011 to 2013, and from about 2013 at Epstein's house at 9 East 71st Street.³

Groff managed Epstein's calendar and travel from New York. A 2005 Chicago Tribune article reported salaries of about 200,000 dollars for Epstein's assistants and quoted Epstein describing them as "an extension of my brain."⁴ Groff told the House Oversight Committee that she was paid 50,000 dollars until 2005, with a 10,000 dollar bonus in her first year, 120,000 dollars until 2009, 108,000 dollars thereafter, and from 2015 about 130,000 dollars and perhaps as much as 150,000 dollars. Asked about correspondence in the released files showing that she had been paid "through a loan that you arranged with Richard Kahn," which "says in the correspondence that it was forgivable upon his death," she answered "Yes." She testified that "in 2016, I believe that my salary did change to a loan plus a small paycheck," that she "was told it was a new structure," and that the loan was 100,000 dollars in 2016, "the same for 2017, 2018," and 110,000 dollars in 2019, while "the salary portion became less."³ A Deutsche Bank know-your-customer page for "The 2013 Butterfly Trust," produced to the federal grand jury in New York, listed her among the trust's "Current Potential Beneficiaries," with Indyke and Epstein's pilot Larry Visoski.⁵

Duties and the Scheduling Record

Groff described her duties to the committee: "I scheduled his business meetings. I scheduled breakfasts, lunches, dinners. If he was going to have a party, I might coordinate with that. I coordinated with his staff at all the homes. On his island, I coordinated with his pilots. I would sometimes coordinate trips to, say, a TED conference." She said she informed the pilots of departure times and could have told them who would be traveling, that she never traveled on Epstein's airplanes, and that she took "the one helicopter ride," from St. Thomas to his island to see a construction project. She recalled Epstein speaking with Senator John Kerry, General Wesley Clark, George Mitchell and the governor of New Mexico; of Donald Trump she said that "early on, he spoke with Trump, but that was before he became President," and "I would connect phone calls. That was it." She said Epstein spoke with Prince Andrew when Andrew was in town.³

Messages from her desk in the Epstein Files released by the Justice Department include:

• April 27, 2011: "Howard Lutnick will come see" Epstein on a Sunday at 5 p.m., a visit by the chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick.⁶
• February 22, 2012: to the defense lawyer Roy Black, "Jeffrey would like to meet with you along with Reid Weingarten on Friday March 2nd in Miami"; Black replied, "No problem I can do Friday afternoon."⁷
• June 24, 2013: "Julian Leese is in NY... OK to schedule in Julian Leese?"⁸
• March 24, 2014: arranging a call between Epstein and Jacqui Safra on a Swiss mobile number.⁹
• August 14, 2014: to the Virgin Islands lawyer Stacey Plaskett, copying Erika Kellerhals, "will you be able to meet with Jeffrey on his island on Monday Aug. 18th at 11am?"; Plaskett replied, "Please share details on time and transportation to Jeffrey." Plaskett was elected the territory's delegate to Congress that November.¹⁰
• April 21, 2015: "Carlton Dowe returned your call," a reference to the executive director of the Virgin Islands Port Authority, Carlton Dowe.¹¹
• August 5, 2015: "Jeffrey Epstein attended Reid Hoffman/Peter Thiel's dinner party this past Sunday night at Baume Restaurant. At the party Mark requested Jeffrey send his contact details to him," with Mark Zuckerberg named among the recipients; the hosts were Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel.¹²
• August 28, 2016: "Vitaly Churkin will also join the lunch tomorrow...it is now JE, [redacted], Tom Barrack and Churkin. 4 total," a lunch with the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, and Tom Barrack.¹³
• November 29, 2016: to Joi Ito of the MIT Media Lab, arranging a visit by Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, chairman of DP World, to Epstein at Martin Nowak's office at Harvard, "1 Brattle Square."¹⁴
• June 13, 2019: a calendar entry routed to her, "need Thorbjorn Jagland to confirm dinner on June 20th," with the former Norwegian prime minister and secretary general of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland, three weeks before Epstein's arrest.¹⁵

Allegations and Denials

Marina Lacerda, who has said she dropped out of school before the ninth grade and was abused by Epstein as a minor, has said she "had to go through Lesley Groff," who called repeatedly to arrange massages. A victim who was a minor at the time told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that she "felt it was pretty obvious Lesley knew what was going on." Groff's attorney Michael Bachner has said that she "never knowingly booked travel for anyone under the age of 18" and "had no knowledge of the alleged illegal activity whatsoever," and that after the 2019 arrest she "felt betrayed and disgusted."²

Groff was a named defendant, with Epstein, Maxwell, and Sarah Kellen, in the federal sex-trafficking suit filed in January 2017 by Sarah Ransome, who alleged that the four told her Epstein would secure her admission to the Fashion Institute of Technology in exchange for massages. The suit was dismissed with prejudice by stipulation on December 20, 2018.¹⁶ In October 2019 Jennifer Araoz, who has said Epstein abused her when she was 14 and 15, amended her Child Victims Act suit in New York state court to name Groff, "who worked as his secretary," Maxwell and two other women; Araoz alleged that Groff "often contacted her to set up sexual encounters with him." Bachner responded that Groff had worked "as part of a professional staff that included in-house attorneys, accountants" and other office staff, and that she never engaged in "any misconduct" during her employment.¹⁷ On October 14, 2021 a plaintiff represented by Gloria Allred sued Groff with Indyke and Kahn in the Southern District of New York (Doe v. Indyke, No. 1:21-cv-08469, before Judge P. Kevin Castel); Jonathan Whitcomb, Danielle Charlot and Bachner appeared for Groff, and the case was closed on April 4, 2024.¹⁸

The 2007 Investigation

On August 21, 2007, according to a document read to her by committee counsel, FBI agents came to Groff's home. She testified that she let them in and sat with them, then "went upstairs and I called Darren Indyke, who is the in-house counsel," who told her not to speak to them without an attorney; the agents left, and "Mr. Epstein got me an attorney, and I went and spoke to him once."³ The subpoena, issued on August 16, 2007 under control number OLY-73 of grand jury FGJ 07-103 in West Palm Beach, commanded her to appear at the federal courthouse at 701 Clematis Street on September 4, 2007 at 1 p.m. and to coordinate her compliance with a special agent of the FBI. Its attachment demanded, "For the period of January 1, 2001 to the present, all calendars, agendas, daily diaries, or other records of appointments, travel, meetings and the like, kept by or on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein," Groff and others whose names are redacted; from January 1, 2003, all address books and contact lists and "all e-mails, instant messages, text messages, meeting invitations, and any other electronic communication" among the same persons, in each case with "all metadata included within the electronic/physical files"; and "Any cellular phone, 'Blackberry' unit, personal digital assistant ('PDA') or other handheld electronic device that you own or use regularly."¹⁹ The prosecutors' chronology of the case records a September 12, 2007 email between Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Marie Villafana and the defense lawyer Nathan Z. Dershowitz stating that "Ms. Groff will proceed by interview."²⁰

At the 2026 interview committee counsel introduced a "plea proffer from United States v. Jeffrey Epstein," Bates number EFTA00213369, released by the Justice Department in January 2026, which stated that after the agents arrived Groff went upstairs and called Epstein, who "instructed Ms. Groff not to speak with the agents," "applied pressure to keep Ms. Groff from complying with the grand jury subpoena that the agents had served upon her," and "warned Ms. Groff against turning over documents and electronic evidence responsive to the subpoena and pressured her to delay her appearance before the Federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida." Asked whether the document was incorrect, Groff said: "I believe it is. I don't know how they would know that. I really believe that I called Mr. Indyke," adding, "I wouldn't call Mr. Epstein." Asked whether she remembered Epstein pressuring her over the subpoena, she answered: "None. No."³

Immunity and the 2019 Investigation

The 2007 agreement provided that the United States would not charge "any potential co-conspirators of Epstein, including but not limited to Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross, Lesley Groff, or Nadia Marcinkova." In 2024 the Second Circuit held, in rejecting Maxwell's reliance on the clause, that it bound only the Southern District of Florida.¹

Four days after Epstein's July 2019 arrest, Bachner informed the government that Groff "would invoke her Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination" if called before a grand jury. She spoke with investigators about two years after the 2019 subpoena and told them that scheduling massages was "around 1%" of her duties. She was not charged.² She told the committee that she resigned through Indyke and did not speak to Epstein.³

The index of non-testifying witness material produced to the defense in United States v. Ghislaine Maxwell, dated November 6, 2021, lists sixteen items under Groff's name. They include a law enforcement report dated August 15, 2007; a letter regarding her interview, an FBI 302 report of the interview and interview notes, all dated August 21, 2007; an FBI report "documenting interview with Leslie Groff" dated January 9, 2008; the "Testimony of" a person whose name is redacted, dated March 18 and April 29, 2008; a "Starr submission to DAG" dated June 19, 2008, a submission by Epstein's lawyer Kenneth Starr to the Deputy Attorney General; an interview 302 and interview notes dated July 6, 2019, the day of Epstein's arrest; "Lesley Groff attorney proffer notes" dated February 13, 2020 and an "attorney proffer follow-up" dated February 21, 2020; and a "Signed proffer agreement," an interview 302 and interview notes, all dated July 23, 2021. Michael Bachner is named in the index's attorney column beside her entries. The items were produced to Maxwell's lawyers between April and October 2021.²¹

Congressional Interview

In June 2026 Groff was interviewed by the House Oversight Committee. She said she wished to "dispel the false notions" that she "knowingly enabled or conspired with him to commit his evil acts," adding: "Nothing could be further from the truth." She called Epstein a "master manipulator and deceiver," said of the 2007 clause, "I am not a conspirator and I never would have agreed to this language," recalled that Epstein had described the accusations against him as "a shakedown" for money, and said of his accusers, "I believe them." She also said: "In hindsight, I wish he had fired me."²

The transcribed interview took place on June 9, 2026 in the Rayburn House Office Building, with Chairman James Comer and Ranking Member Robert Garcia among seventeen members present; the chaplain of the House, Margaret Kibben, was listed as also present. Groff appeared with Bachner and Whitcomb. Asked by Representative James Walkinshaw whether she had ever arranged or logged travel for Trump or his family, or anyone acting for him, on Epstein's aircraft, she answered "No," and told Representative Rashida Tlaib, "I never booked travel for Mr. Trump." Asked whether she had known of meetings between Epstein and Virginia Giuffre, she said: "It's possible. I don't know. It was a really long time ago. But it's possible," adding that "Palm Beach was not really my area of where I was booking appointments"; asked whether she might have scheduled such meetings, she said, "An appointment. It's possible." She testified that a fund Epstein set up had paid her lawyers' invoices before his death and ceased when he died; Whitcomb stated that she had made a claim against the estate, not a lawsuit, and had received about 300,000 dollars "for reimbursement of legal fees." She said she held no interest in the estate and had not spoken with Indyke or Kahn in preparing for the interview.³