Groff tells lawmakers ‘I am not a conspirator’ and that she had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes while working for him
Lesley Groff,Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime executive assistant, testified Tuesday before the House oversight and reform committee, telling lawmakers that she had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes while working for him.
“I believe that my testimony will dispel the false notion that because of my employment with Epstein, I must have knowingly enabled or conspired with him to commit his evil acts,” Groff told lawmakers in her prepared opening remarks, obtained by the Guardian. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Groff worked for Epstein from 2001 until his arrest in July 2019.On Tuesday, she said that “Mr Epstein was, in hindsight, a master manipulator and deceiver who separated his legitimate life from his secret life as an abuser and made sure that as his secretary those two world did not collide.”
She told the committee, which is conducting interviews as part of its investigation into the convicted sex trafficker, that she never socialized with Epstein, never flew on his private plane, never visited him in jail, never attended one of his parties or accompanied him to his private island, New Mexico ranch or his Palm Beach residence.
Ahead of the hearing,Representative Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House committee, toldGood Morning Americathis week that Groff is “really central to Epstein’s organization, we want to know what she saw”.
“We have a lot of questions,” Garcia added. A transcript of her testimony and her answers to lawmakers questions was expected to be released at a later date.
Notes from a2021 FBI interviewwith Groff, which was included in the millions of documents related to Epstein released by the Department of Justice earlier this year, state that she began working for Epstein after she was contacted by a headhunter, who found her résumé and told her that there “was a job to organize one man’s life”.
The man turned out to be Epstein, and Groff told agents that she had not previously heard of him. She said that she interviewed with several people for the position, including Epstein andGhislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime associate who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes. According to the FBI document, Groff said that she signed a non-disclosure agreement.
Groff told agents her duties included scheduling meetings, making phone calls, coordinating with his other employees,and managing his daily schedule and appointments.
According to the FBI notes, Groff told investigators that “from the beginning, massage was a part of Epstein’s day; they were normal appointments”.
“Groff’s job was to make appointments” the FBI notes say. “To Groff, making massage appointments was just another appointment she had to make for Epstein,” adding that Epstein would call Groff “in the morning and say something like, ‘Call and see if she can do a massage at 4.’”
In her opening remarks on Tuesday, Groff told lawmakers that every morning, Epstein would call her at 9am with dozens of tasks for her to complete, and said that “almost daily, I made massage appointments for Mr Epstein”.
“He provided me with the name and telephone number of a masseuse and I called her,” she said. “These calls lasted literally a few seconds.”
She told the committee that to her knowledge, “I never met any of the masseuses” and said that “none of these women or anyone else ever told me they were minors; or that they were sexually abused.
