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Maria Ramirez Uribe
Maria Ramirez Uribe
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Lesley Groff, longtime assistant to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, is scheduled to sit for a closed-door transcribed interview on Tuesday before the House Oversight Committee.
Groff worked for Epstein from 2001 to July 2019, when the late, disgraced financier was arrested on sex-trafficking charges. Her name appears more than 160,000 times in the millions of documents the Justice Department has released related to Epstein.
Groff has never been charged with a crime and, despite working closely with Epstein, her lawyers have maintained that she was unaware of Epstein's illicit activities.
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Groff's voluntary interview is part of the committee's ongoing investigation into the federal government's handling of cases involving Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. Another one of Epstein's assistants, Sarah Kellen, testified before the committee in May.
READ MORE: Former Epstein assistant Sarah Kellen testified before the House committee. Here's what we know
Other notable figures who have provided testimony include former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, former Attorney General Pam Bondi and a former prison guard who was working the night before the financier was found dead in his cell.
From across the political spectrum and the worlds of finance, entertainment and beyond, a number of powerful figures have emerged in the Epstein documents released by the DOJ. Inclusion in the files does not necessarily indicate wrongdoing, but the fallout has led to some high-profile resignations and calls for more accountability.
Groff worked for Epstein for nearly two decades in New York, managing his schedule, including by setting up daily massages for him. According to Epstein's 2019 indictment on sex-trafficking charges, massages were how his survivors were initially recruited.
Epstein paid women and girls for the massages, "which would be performed nude or partially nude, would become increasingly sexual in nature, and would typically include one or more sex acts."
In a 2021 interview with prosecutors, Groff said the massages were "presented like it was totally normal."
Maxwell instructed Groff not to fraternize with Epstein or the people she spoke with on the phone, including Epstein's friends, according to Groff's 2021 interview. A few weeks into working for Epstein, Groff went to a party she was invited to through work. Epstein "torched" her after finding out and threatened to fire her.
Groff recalled being told that mistakes were not tolerated and Epstein telling her she ruined his whole day after she made a scheduling error.
Publicly, Epstein described Groff and his other assistants as "an extension of my brain," in a 2005 interview with The New York Times. In the same interview, Epstein said he bought Groff a Mercedes-Benz and agreed to pay for a full-time nanny after Groff got pregnant.
"There is no way that I could lose Lesley to motherhood," Epstein said.
The controversial 2008 non-prosecution agreement Epstein entered into with the Justice Department named Groff as a potential co-conspirator that the U.S. "will not institute any criminal charges against."
Following Epstein's 2019 death by suicide, the Justice Department continued investigating people connected to him, including Groff. A 2019 Justice Department list of Epstein family and associates named Groff as a "co-conspirator." The list also included Maxwell.
A memo describing the department's investigation after Epstein's suicide details Groff's interactions with Epstein's survivors, including scheduling appointments, arranging travel and completing payments.
A survivor, whose name is redacted in the document, recalled Groff sitting outside Epstein's office while he forced the survivor "to perform oral sex on him," however the survivor said she didn't know whether Groff knew what was happening inside the office.
The Justice Department has never charged Groff with any crime connected to Epstein. However, Groff was named in several lawsuits brought forth by survivors. The lawsuits were dismissed.
Groff has refrained from speaking publicly about her time working for Epstein, but her lawyers have maintained her innocence.
"This is a true vindication for our client Lesley Groff who had no knowledge and no participation in any of these horrific crimes," Groff's lawyers said in a 2020 statement, after one of Epstein's survivors dropped a case against Groff.
According to the statement, Groff never witnessed anything illegal, and she found out about Epstein's crimes "when the rest of the world did."
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<small>Source: PBS NewsHour</small>
