Kirkland & Ellis

Kirkland & Ellis LLP is an American law firm with a large Washington office. Two of its lawyers, the litigation partner Jay Lefkowitz and Kenneth Starr, then of counsel, represented Jeffrey Epstein in 2007 and 2008 in negotiating the Epstein non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida, whose head, Alexander Acosta, had been an associate in the firm's Washington office. Lefkowitz was at the same time the George W. Bush administration's part-time Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea. In late 2008 Acosta recused himself from matters involving the firm because he had begun to discuss employment with it. William Barr joined the firm in 2009 and, as Attorney General in 2019, recused himself from the Justice Department's review of the Florida agreement because of that tie.¹²³⁴

Acosta

Acosta graduated from Harvard Law School in 1994, clerked for Judge Samuel Alito on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and then practiced as an associate in Kirkland's Washington office, specializing in employment and labor law. He served as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division from 2001 to 2002, on the National Labor Relations Board from December 2002 to August 2003, and as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights from August 2003 to June 2005, when Bush appointed him U.S. Attorney in Miami.¹

Lefkowitz and Starr

Lefkowitz had served under George H.W. Bush as deputy executive secretary of the Domestic Policy Council and director of cabinet affairs, was a partner in Kirkland's Washington office, became general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget in March 2001 and Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy in 2002, and was appointed Special Envoy on August 19, 2005 under the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004. The State Department's 2006 biography described him as "also a senior partner at Kirkland & Ellis, LLP." Starr, a former judge of the D.C. Circuit, Solicitor General from 1989 to 1993 and the Whitewater independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton, had been a Kirkland partner and was of counsel to the firm while dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law.²³⁵

Epstein's defense had been conducted since 2006 by Roy Black, Alan Dershowitz, Gerald Lefcourt, Lilly Ann Sanchez and others. In early August 2007, immediately after the federal office presented a term sheet requiring a state guilty plea, jail time, sex offender registration and civil damages, Epstein added Lefkowitz and Starr. Acosta had worked on at least one matter with each of them at the firm; a colleague told the Office of Professional Responsibility that he once entered Acosta's office as Acosta finished a telephone call and Acosta said, "[T]hat was Ken Starr." On the evening of August 6, 2007, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sloman emailed Acosta: "Just saw Menchel. I didn't know Kirkland made a call into you. You were right. Unbelievable." Acosta answered that the Kirkland lawyers "are likely to go to DC. We should strategize a bit. We are not changing positions, and that should be made clear."⁴⁵

The final terms were worked out in September 2007 in email between the line prosecutor, A. Marie Villafaña, and Epstein's counsel, principally Lefkowitz. On September 13 she wrote that she had been "spending some quality time with Title 18 looking for misdemeanors," and defense counsel answered that he was "[a]lready thinking about the same statutes." The agreement was signed on September 24, 2007. On December 11, 2007 the office wrote to Lefkowitz at Kirkland's New York office, over Acosta's name, answering what the letter called "the ever-increasing attacks on my role in the investigation and negotiations," and noting that "[t]he agreement itself was signed by Mr. Epstein, Ms. Sanchez, and Mr. Lefcourt, whose experience speaks for itself." On December 17 Starr and Lefkowitz sent Acosta a 110-page letter, and through the first half of 2008 they appealed the agreement to the Justice Department's Criminal Division and to the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, which declined to intervene on June 23, 2008.⁵⁶⁷

The Office of Professional Responsibility wrote in 2020 that "a reasonable inference can be drawn that Epstein believed that hiring attorneys with relationships to the prosecutors would be beneficial to him," naming Starr and Lefkowitz of "Kirkland & Ellis, Acosta's former firm," among others.⁸

Acosta's Recusal

In late 2008, "when Acosta anticipated leaving the USAO and was considering pursuing employment with Kirkland & Ellis," he told Sloman to stop copying him on Epstein emails. On November 26, 2008 the office told the Department that Acosta was recused from matters involving the firm, and on December 8, 2008 the Department approved the recusal because he had "begun to discuss possible employment" with it. Sloman became the senior official responsible for final decisions on Epstein, including the prosecutors' notice that Epstein's work release breached the agreement. Acosta left the office in June 2009 to become dean of the law school at Florida International University.⁸⁹

After the Plea

On December 15, 2010 a correspondent writing as "jagesq" told Epstein that former Palm Beach State Attorney Barry Krischer had lunched with a New York criminal defense lawyer, and added: "We may want to think about using him with the registration stuff unless we are too invested with Kirkland. probably help us with Krischer." In Epstein's New York sex offender registration appeal, People v. Jeffrey E. Epstein, a motion to unseal in the Appellate Division, First Department, attached a press article stating: "Like Acosta, Starr had worked at the prestigious law firm Kirkland & Ellis. Epstein also tapped Jay Lefkowitz, also of Kirkland, who worked as a domestic policy advisor and later as a special envoy to North Korea during the George W. Bush presidency."¹⁰¹¹

Barr

Barr joined Kirkland & Ellis in 2009. After Epstein's July 2019 arrest in New York, Barr told reporters on July 8, 2019: "I'm recused from that matter because one of the law firms that represented Epstein long ago was a firm I subsequently joined for a period of time." The next day a Justice Department official said that Barr had consulted career ethics officials and "concluded he did not have to recuse himself from the current prosecution" in the Southern District of New York, and that "[d]ue to his prior association with Kirkland and Ellis, the Attorney General has and will remain recused from any retrospective review of the resolution of the earlier [Southern District of Florida] matter." The former FBI assistant director Frank Figliuzzi called the distinction "a distinction without a difference," saying the two matters were "inexorably linked," and also pointed to reports that Barr's father, Donald Barr, as headmaster of the Dalton School in the 1970s, had hired Epstein to teach mathematics although Epstein had no college degree.¹²

Lefkowitz's Retirement

Lefkowitz retired from the firm in March 2026 after three decades, saying: "Although I believe everyone is entitled to representation no matter how heinous their crimes, knowing what we all know now, I would not have taken on the Epstein matter." A Kirkland spokesperson said: "To say the least, we deeply regret the firm's 2007 representation of Jeffrey Epstein."³