For nearly twenty-five years, Jeffrey Epstein’s townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side served as a base of operations for the horrific trafficking and sexual abuse of girls and young women. Despite leading a high-profile life, Epstein carried out his activities under the nose of New York’s law enforcement authorities. 

With no hope in sight for justice at the federal level, it is time for New York state and local officials to take up the mantle of seeking truth and accountability for the crimes committed by Epstein and his co-conspirators – and to reckon with its own law enforcement failures. There are four options New York can now undertake under state law.

The New York Crimes

An enormous amount of the heinous offenses committed by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell occurred in New York, as their federal indictments showcase. The Manhattan townhouse was an epicenter. 

Information from the survivors – in FBI interviews and civil lawsuits (such as Virginia Giuffre’s complaint) – make clear that Manhattan was a place where other men allegedly sexually abused the girls and young women who were caught in Epstein’s lair. As one indicator: the “New York residence” appears 45 times in the SDNY federal prosecutor’s 86-page internal memorandum entitled, “Investigation into Potential Co-Conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein.” That document was filed over six years ago, and significant evidence has emerged since then. What’s more, criminal probes now underway in several countries are likely to produce even more information that could be shared with New York prosecutors.

Lost Time?: The “Stand Down” Directive

New York’s law enforcement authorities also have plenty of leads that have been left unexplored in their own backyard. That may be due in part, as I recently noted, because the FBI “directed” the New York City Police Department to “stand down” its Epstein work in July 2019 five days after Epstein’s arrest, emails released by the Justice Department show. The FBI “assumed” the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office would stand down as well following the directive, another email shows.

The stand-down directive posed special problems at the time the federal authorities issued it. In the days following Epstein’s arrest, many survivors started to come forward. For instance, four days after Epstein’s arrest, one survivor sat for an interview with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie. When the FBI learned that the Manhattan DA reached out to the victim, one FBI official’s email called it a “fire” that needed to be put out. A flurry of SDNY/FBI email messages about the stand down directive followed.

The federal efforts to close out state and local law enforcement authorities were something of a pattern. New Mexico’s authorities have recently noted that “the State of New Mexico’s prior investigation was closed in 2019 at the request of the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.” Sound familiar? It’s similar to how Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.’s stood down in response to a SDNY request in the Trump hush money investigation.

The Epstein stand-down order likely affected the efforts of state and local law enforcement to carry out normal investigatory work, at least for some time. That said, it is not clear that the NYPD ever seriously pursued Epstein and his co-conspirators at least until the revelations in the Miami Herald in November 2018. And the Manhattan DA did investigate Leon Black and potentially Jes Staley, the DOJ files show. The district attorney did not file charges against either man. 

The many open questions – including how Epstein was able to evade justice for so long and what failures on the part of New York law enforcement may explain it – are part of the reason New York officials now need to act.

New York’s Available Options

Options 1-3: Truth Seeking and Accountability

If the goal is truth-seeking – such as getting to the bottom of the decades-long law enforcement failures with Epstein and his co-conspirators – multiple options exist for the New York Governor, the State legislature, and city officials. Within the existing legal framework, three mechanisms allow for fact-finding (importantly, with subpoena power) and provide a forum for victims:

The legislature can establish an investigatory committee/commission
The Governor can establish an investigatory commission under the Moreland Act
The Governor can appoint the Attorney General to serve as a Special Prosecutor

A Moreland Commission has “exceptionally strong powers” and should be able to exercise jurisdiction over the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office as a state entity, but not over the NYPD as a city entity. Columbia University Law Professor Richard Briffault said in an email, “If you want something truly independent, and with oversight of NYC, a legislatively created commission would be better.”

Bennett Liebman, Government Lawyer in Residence at the Government Law Center of Albany Law School, wrote in an email, “a legislative – preferably a joint – committee might be a possibility. This might be similar to New Mexico. Two legislative committees proved helpful in the past in providing meaningful reforms in New York City criminal justice, the Lexow Committee in 1894 and the Seabury Committee in the early 1930’s. The success of such committees has depended almost entirely on their leadership. Under Seabury and twice in the 1900’s under Charles Evans Hughes, they were extremely successful.”

Liebman also noted the third option, writing: “Another possibility is for the governor, working with the Attorney General, to name a special prosecutor for Epstein related corruption under Section 63 of the Executive Law. The special prosecutor need not bring any indictments but could be empowered to conduct a complete investigation of Epstein’s relationships with law enforcement.”

There is also some precedent for a joint state and city initiative to investigate corruption. In 1986, Governor Mario Cuomo and Mayor Ed Koch created the State-City Commission on Integrity in Government, which was later followed by the Moreland Commission on Government Integrity.

These kinds of initiatives can provide a forum for truth seeking and an avenue for future legislative reform. What needs to be uncovered is not only the other perpetrators in Epstein’s heinous conspiracy, but also the systemic failures of law enforcement to detect and repress the extensive sexual violence that occured over decades. 

Option 4: Criminal investigations

New York offers one of the greatest hopes for criminal accountability because relevant state felonies – including different forms of sexual assault against a minor – have no statute of limitations. With new evidence from the DOJ Epstein files and the Epstein Estate emails, new victims stepping forward, and investigative journalists taking up the new leads and producing new revelations, there is good reason for the Manhattan DA to conduct criminal investigations of potential co-conspirators (if the office is not doing so already). 

To be clear, there’s no reason to invoke option 3 above for criminal enforcement purposes. The Manhattan DA is fully capable of pursuing potential cases.

The New Mexico Model

New York was certainly not alone as a location for Epstein’s atrocities. Epstein’s sprawling, remote Zorro ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico was another. 

After the latest release of Epstein files and no effort by the Justice Department to pursue genuine investigations, the New Mexico House of Representatives established, by a unanimous vote, an Epstein Truth Commission. The legislature is using the vehicle of a special investigatory committee to conduct that work (option 1 above). The state’s Attorney General Raúl Torrez more recently announced the reopening of a criminal probe into the activities that occurred in his state (option 4). 

New Mexico’s leadership shows the type of pathways that New York can also pursue. 

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New York needs to go through a reckoning. Out of it may emerge legislative and executive reforms that can improve law enforcement’s ability to fight such monstrous crimes. 

FEATURED IMAGE: New York State Capitol, Albany, New York.