Andrew Lourie

Andrew C. Lourie is an American lawyer and former federal prosecutor who, as a deputy chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida and managing attorney of its West Palm Beach branch, supervised the 2006 to 2007 investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and took part in negotiating the Epstein non-prosecution agreement. Twice detailed to Washington as acting chief of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, he left the Miami office in September 2007, while the agreement was being negotiated, to become Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General and chief of staff to Alice Fisher, head of the department's Criminal Division, and left the department in February 2008. He later practiced government enforcement defense at Kobre & Kim and Tein Malone in Miami. The Office of Professional Responsibility named him one of five subjects of its Epstein investigation and found no professional misconduct.¹²

Career

According to his current firm biography, Lourie practiced at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in New York and then served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, focusing on public corruption. He joined the Southern District of Florida office in 1994 after three years in New Jersey, and during a thirteen-year tenure there headed the Major Crimes unit and the West Palm Beach office. He served two details as acting chief of the Public Integrity Section, from September 2001 to September 2002 and from February to July 2006. Kobre & Kim's biography of him states that as chief of the section he supervised public corruption prosecutions including investigations of bribery in Congress and the executive branch arising from the prosecution of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and that as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General he ran the day-to-day operations of the 438-lawyer Criminal Division.¹³⁴

Supervising the Epstein Case

Lourie returned to West Palm Beach in July 2006 as the managing attorney over the line prosecutor A. Marie Villafaña, who had briefed Alexander Acosta and Jeffrey Sloman on the new case that month without first telling him. On July 24, 2006 Sloman emailed Lourie that Operation Leap Year was "a highly sensitive case involving some Palm Beach rich guy." When Villafaña kept sending updates directly to Miami, Lourie asked Sloman in August, "Do you and Alex [Acosta] want her updating you on the case?" Sloman answered, "At this point, I don't really care." The Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section chief, Andrew Oosterbaan, reviewed her prosecution memorandum favorably, but Lourie told OPR the case was "a bit of uncharted territory." After explaining to the FBI squad supervisor on May 9, 2007 that charges would not be quickly approved, he reported to Matthew Menchel that the FBI was "not happy," adding: "I did not even tell them I think we should bring [Epstein] in, once we decide to charge him, and offer a pre-indictment deal, figuring a judge might never agree to such a deal post indictment. That would have sent them thru the roof."⁵⁶

On May 10, 2007 he wrote to Villafaña: "I believe that Epstein's att[orneys] are scared of the victims they don't know. Epstein has no doubt told them that there were many. Thus I believe the f[ir]st indictment should contain only the victims they have nothing on at all. We can add in the other ones that have myspace [sic] pages and prior testimony in a [superseding indictment]. I think for the first strike we should make all their nightmare[]s come true." The next day he recommended to Acosta and Menchel: "My current thoughts are that we should charge him," proposing to "start with a complaint, arrest him, detain him . . . and then try to see if he wants a pre-indictment resolution." He told OPR that he "was not in favor of walking away, which is what the defense wanted," but "didn't think the odds were nearly as good as you want in a criminal case."⁶

The September 2007 Negotiations

Lourie was on the federal side of the September 13, 2007 joint meeting with Rolando Garcia and Villafaña, facing Epstein's lawyers Jay Lefkowitz, Gerald Lefcourt and Jack Goldberger, with State Attorney Barry Krischer and Lanna Belohlavek for the state. When Villafaña proposed that Epstein plead to a federal assault charge, Lourie told her it "sounds like a stretch and factually [is] sort of silly," and told Sloman and Acosta that he did not "like the assault charge" because it would not "go smooth with every judge"; Acosta answered, "If we need[,] let's find a different charge." Villafaña then relayed his advice to Lefkowitz: "Andy recommended that some of the timing issues be addressed only in the state agreement, so that it isn't obvious to the judge that we are trying to create federal jurisdiction for prison purposes." On September 23, the day before the agreement was signed, Acosta told Lefkowitz to deal directly with Lourie and Villafaña.⁷⁸⁹

That month Lourie moved to Washington as Fisher's chief of staff. OPR found that the three supervisors under Acosta "left the USAO, were transitioning to other jobs, or were absent at critical junctures." From Washington, on November 29, 2007, he was party to an exchange that Sloman forwarded, recording that the defense "originally agreed to plead to the state felony that they thought was unregisterable (but did not tell us knowing we thought it was), but then discovered they were wrong and tried to get out of it."¹²⁹

Ties to the Defense

One of Epstein's Miami lawyers, identified in OPR's report by the first name Guy, was a former career Assistant U.S. Attorney who had been U.S. Attorney for the district from 2000 to 2002 and then for two years Director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys; he telephoned Villafaña with an overture on Epstein's behalf in early November 2006, a call Sloman joined. OPR found that "Villafaña and Lourie had worked for [him] and Lourie was close friends with one of [his] law partners," also a former Assistant U.S. Attorney representing Epstein. A December 2018 account of Epstein's early defense team listed "former U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis" among its members.¹⁰¹¹

Early in the investigation Lourie voluntarily asked the office's Professional Responsibility Officer whether the two friendships created "either a conflict of interest or an appearance of impropriety mandating recusal." The officer answered that they were not "covered" relationships under the conflict guidelines and deferred to Sloman or Menchel "to make the call," and Sloman authorized Lourie to continue supervising the case. OPR treated the inquiry as "an indication that he was alert to his ethical responsibilities." Lourie told OPR that his "preexisting associations with Epstein's attorneys" did not influence "anything."¹⁰

After the Justice Department

Lourie left the department in February 2008 for private practice and became a partner at Kobre & Kim, where his practice covered government enforcement defense in commodities manipulation, spoofing, insider trading and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act matters, and international judgment enforcement and asset recovery. In 2015 the firm quoted the Chambers guide that his "skills are extraordinary, and his judgment is first-rate." Menchel, his former Criminal Division chief on the Epstein matter, is a partner at the same firm. Lourie is now of counsel at the Miami firm Tein Malone, whose attorneys include Michael Tein.¹³⁴¹²

OPR and Villafaña

Questioned by OPR about Villafaña's September 2007 emails, which the district court had quoted in 2019 in Doe v. United States, Lourie said he was "surprised to see how nice she was to them. And she winds up taking it on the chin for being so nice to them. When I know the whole time she was the one who wanted to go after him the most." OPR found no professional misconduct by Lourie or the other four subjects.²¹³