(WASHINGTON) — Lesley Groff, the former executive secretary of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, attempted to deflect any culpability in Epstein’s crimes, telling lawmakers that she routinely scheduled massages for her boss but never booked appointments for anyone she knew to be underage, according to a House Oversight Committee transcript released Tuesday.
“I never met these women, so I didn’t know if they were young or how old they were,” Groff said during her appearance earlier this month. “I thought that it was just something that he did, like going to the gym.”
Groff, who worked for Epstein in New York for more than 18 years, was previously described by her boss as an “extension of my brain.” She appeared as part of the committee’s ongoing inquiry into the federal government’s handling of investigations into Epstein and his alleged accomplices.
Once identified by federal prosecutors as a potential co-conspirator in Epstein’s crimes, Groff said she hoped her interview would “dispel the false notions” that she “knowingly enabled or conspired with him to commit his evil acts.”
Over the course of an eight-hour interview, Groff faced at times skeptical inquiries from committee members and staff, who questioned how she could have been unaware of Epstein’s predilection for sexualized massages, the transcript shows.
“You want us to believe that after 18 years working in the employ of Mr. Jeffrey Epstein that not on one occasion did you believe that any of your contacts in setting up these appointments with Jeffrey Epstein were either a minor or an underage person, correct?” asked Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill.
“That is correct,” Groff replied.
“This strains credulity, Ms. Groff,” Krishnamoorthi said.
“Ms. Groff, do you think that a 14-year-old sounds the same as a person in their 20s or 30s or 40s?” asked an attorney for the committee.
“It’s possible. I don’t know. I was not evaluating voices,” Groff replied. “Nobody ever sounded like they were underage.”
Groff, now 59, appeared voluntarily for the interview, which was not under oath and not recorded. It marks the first time she has faced questions since speaking to the FBI in New York in 2021, two years after Epstein’s death. Later that year, prosecutors informed her that she would not be charged, according to her attorneys.
Groff told the committee that she was hired by Epstein in 2001 and was immediately “astonished by the truly impressive people in his circle,” including past presidents, actors, musicians and scientists. Â
“I actually felt lucky to have found such an amazing job. I was thrust into the lifestyles of the rich and famous,” she said in her prepared opening remarks.
She said Epstein’s directive for daily massages was a “very small part” of her duties in coordinating Epstein’s schedule. From the moment she was hired, Epstein and his then-partner Ghislaine Maxwell “established guardrails” and made it clear that she was never to associate with their friends.
“Their business was none of my business,” she said she was told.
When Epstein came under law enforcement scrutiny in Florida in the mid-2000s — first by the Palm Beach police and later by the FBI — Groff said he told her he had been set up for blackmail by a girl who lied about her age.
“It was a shakedown, he claimed, for money,” Groff said. “At the time, I actually felt sorry for him. I thought, ‘Wow, this must be really difficult to be a wealthy person and not know who you can trust because everybody wants your money.'”
Groff said she first learned of the criminal investigation when the FBI showed up at her home in Connecticut in 2007.
“I let them in my house and sat with them on my sofa, and they started asking me some questions. That’s how I found out,” she said. “I think my head was probably spinning. I had no idea.”
Groff told the committee she excused herself to check on her son and then called Epstein’s in-house lawyer about the FBI visit. She said she was advised not to talk to the agents without a lawyer.
“And so I went downstairs and said, ‘I don’t think I should be speaking to you without an attorney present.’ And they didn’t really like that, and then they left,” she said.
Groff said that after Epstein went to jail in 2008, she considered resigning. She stayed, she said, because she “actually believed he had been set up” and because she saw that the “same VIP’s continued to surround” him after his conviction.
“I looked around the office and I felt people smarter than me were still there and stayed there. All his contacts and business people, no one left,” she said, according to the transcript.
After Epstein’s arrest in July 2019, federal prosecutors in New York included Groff in a list of potential co-conspirators and sent her a subpoena. Her attorney informed the government, just four days after Epstein’s arrest, that Groff “would invoke her Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination” if called to appear before a grand jury, according to DOJ records released in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Prosecutors informed Groff’s lawyer that “numerous victims [of Epstein] had indicated that she was responsible for scheduling massages during which they were sexually abused,” and that she should consider cooperating with the investigation, according to the DOJ records.
Groff eventually interviewed with the investigators two years later, telling prosecutors that “making massage appointments was just another appointment she had to make” for Epstein.
The DOJ files also include an account from a witness — who was a minor at the time of her alleged abuse by Epstein — who told the FBI that she felt Groff “knew that the massage appointments were sexual” and “felt it was pretty obvious Lesley knew what was going on.” The witness also alleged that she explicitly told Groff she was not 18 years old and needed money for an abortion, according to the FBI report.
Asked by a committee attorney about those allegations, Groff said she felt “terrible for this survivor” but contended the witness’s recollections were inaccurate.
“I’m not saying that what she’s thinking — that she told someone — but she did not tell me,” Groff said. “I think she is mistaken. I know she is mistaken.”
Groff said that after Epstein was released from jail in 2010, she was never again asked to book a massage appointment for him. She acknowledged she booked travel — at Epstein’s direction — for women who would later allege to have been sexually exploited. But she contended she had no reason to think the women were being abused.
“I believed them to be traveling assistants, and none of them ever looked unhappy or under duress,” she said. “In hindsight, it’s terrible, I can’t imagine what they were going through.”
She said she was not alarmed by now-public email messages from Epstein’s associates sharing photographs and information about foreign women — because of Epstein’s connections in the modeling and fashion industries. She conceded that some of the emails released by the Justice Department appear alarming in retrospect, but insisted she had no reason to be concerned at the time.
“I did not know that this was occurring. I never saw anything inappropriate,” she said. “Everything to me — that I was doing, I feel like now, looking through a dirty lens, things look dirty. But at this time, I was unaware of anything that was going on.”
Groff said that since Epstein’s arrest in 2019, she has struggled to sleep and eat, been the target of harassment and death threats, and been “shunned” by many of her friends and acquaintances.
She was one of four women listed as potential co-conspirators in Epstein’s controversial non-prosecution agreement in 2007, which she said, “remains her scarlet letter.”
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