Jack Goldberger

Jack Alan Goldberger is a criminal defense lawyer in West Palm Beach, founding partner of the firm now called Goldberger Weiss, who represented Jeffrey Epstein before the Palm Beach State Attorney's Office from 2006 and at his June 30, 2008 guilty plea in state court under the Epstein non-prosecution agreement. The application that won Epstein daytime release from the Palm Beach County Stockade listed his employer, the Florida Science Foundation, at Goldberger's office address and with his firm's telephone number. The line federal prosecutor wrote in December 2008 that "since Day 1, Goldberger and [Krischer] . . . have been scheming to get Epstein out on work release."¹²³

Practice

Goldberger received a B.A. from Syracuse University in 1974 and a J.D. from the University of Miami School of Law in 1978, and was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1978. He has been board-certified in criminal law by the Florida Bar since 1996. His firm's biography lists him as a past member of the board of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, past president of the Palm Beach County Criminal Defense Association, a past member of the Palm Beach County Criminal Justice Commission and past chairman of its Courts Task Force, and past chairman of the Palm Beach County Bar Association's Criminal Court Advisory Committee, and states that his clients include "corporate executives in both the public and private sector, wall street executives, entertainment figures, and professional sports athletes and executives." The firm was earlier styled Atterbury, Goldberger & Weiss.¹⁴

The State Case

Epstein's first local lawyer was a former Palm Beach County assistant state attorney. According to State Attorney Barry Krischer's account to the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, that lawyer brought Alan Dershowitz to see Krischer, and Dershowitz so "tainted the waters" that Epstein also hired Goldberger, with whom Krischer had "a working relationship." The assistant state attorney handling the case was married to Goldberger's law partner; once Goldberger was retained she was removed and Lanna Belohlavek took over. "Goldberger, together with Gerald Lefcourt, a nationally known New York criminal defense attorney also representing Epstein, then directed their efforts at Belohlavek and Krischer to dissuade the office from prosecuting Epstein, largely by attacking the credibility of the victim witnesses."²

On September 12, 2007 Goldberger, Jay Lefkowitz and Gerald Lefcourt met the federal prosecutors together with Krischer and Belohlavek, a meeting at which, the Office of Professional Responsibility found, "the USAO made additional concessions." On September 21 the line prosecutor, A. Marie Villafaña, summarized the State Attorney's negotiations with Goldberger, including his request that Epstein not have to register as a sex offender. On December 7, 2007 Goldberger filed a notice of hearing setting the plea for January 4, 2008; on January 2 he told Belohlavek that the hearing was postponed because the facts "did not fit the proposed state charge." In the spring of 2008, while Epstein's appeal was pending before the Deputy Attorney General, Krischer told the federal office that he and Goldberger had arrived at a resolution involving a 90-day jail term. Villafaña wrote to her supervisor: "Please tell me that you are joking. Maybe we should throw him [Epstein] a party and tell him we are sorry to have bothered him."²⁵

The Plea and the Stockade

In late June 2008 Villafaña objected that the draft state plea form provided for community control, and reported that Goldberger "'swore' that Epstein would be in custody 24-hours-a-day" but "let it slip that Epstein would not be at the jail, he would be at the stockade." Goldberger agreed to insert the word "imprisoned" after "6 months"; the signed form instead carried "jail sentence." Epstein appeared with Goldberger on June 30, 2008 and pleaded guilty to felony solicitation of prostitution and to procuring a person under 18 for prostitution. When the judge asked whether the plea was tied to promises by other jurisdictions, Goldberger and Belohlavek disclosed the non-prosecution agreement at sidebar, and the court ordered it filed under seal. That afternoon Villafaña gave Goldberger the list of 31 victims to whom the agreement's civil-damages provision applied, and on July 10 she sent him a "Final Notification of Identified Victims" listing 32.²

The day after the plea a sheriff's official told Villafaña that Epstein "would be eligible for work release and will be placed on work release," contrary to what Goldberger had "specifically told" her days earlier. She noted that the "Florida Science Foundation," where Epstein told the court he had worked "every day" for "a couple of years," did not exist until November 2007, and that the address he gave the court for it "was the office of Epstein's attorney Jack Goldberger." On December 3, 2008 she wrote to her supervisors: "It appears that, since Day 1, Goldberger and [Krischer] . . . have been scheming to get Epstein out on work release. For example, the indictment incorrectly charges Epstein for an offense that would have made him ineligible for work release if it had been charged correctly." On December 11 she wrote to the sheriff's Corrections Division that the telephone number on Epstein's work release application for the foundation was that of Goldberger's law firm. "The Sheriff's Office neither acknowledged nor responded." The foundation paid the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office 128,136 dollars during Epstein's incarceration, and deputies' July 2009 overtime reports on the detail read "Provide security for Jeffrey Epstein."²³⁶

On June 12, 2009 Villafaña wrote to Goldberger about a violation of the agreement, and on June 15 to Lefkowitz, Roy Black and Goldberger on the history of Epstein's performance; no indictment followed.⁵

Civil Suits

In the 2009 federal suit Jane Doe No. 102 v. Jeffrey Epstein, brought by Virginia Giuffre before Judge Kenneth Marra in the Southern District of Florida, Epstein was represented by Robert D. Critton Jr. of Burman, Critton, Luttier & Coleman and by Goldberger of Atterbury, Goldberger & Weiss. The case ended in a settlement whose agreement and release was filed in 2021 in Giuffre v. Prince Andrew.⁴

Goldberger remained Epstein's co-counsel in Epstein v. Rothstein, the Palm Beach County suit Epstein filed in 2009 against Scott Rothstein and Bradley Edwards, which became Edwards's counterclaim for malicious prosecution. On November 9, 2018 Epstein's counsel, Goldberger among them, moved for in camera inspection of 302 emails withheld on a 1,607-entry privilege log by Edwards and by Paul Cassell, who with Jay Howell represented three victims as limited intervenors, arguing that most were "e-mails among attorneys and staff" and "with media sources." Epstein settled the counterclaim the next month with a written apology to Edwards.⁷⁸