EFTA00206365
From:Paul Cassell [mailto:
Sent:Tuesday, March 15, 2011 7:21 PM
To:(USAFLS)
Cc:(USAFLS); Brad Edwards
Subject:RE: Government's Position on Several Pending Issues? Still Waiting for Answer
Dear Brad and I have received Mr. letter of today. We are deeply disappointed. We will file our court pleadings on Friday. Mr. letter still leaves unanswered a number of questions, which I am writing to raise with you - again. 1. You still have not provided, as you promised you would, the name of the person coordinating the OPR investigation. As a result we have not been able to obtain any information about the status of the investigation. Just to be clear, we intend to include in our filing information that OPR has begun an investigation and to include the information that we currently have about – we assume that making that information public will not compromise OPR's work. 2. We will be making initial disclosures to you under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure shortly. We have not heard back from you on whether you will be making parallel disclosures. Accordingly, we understand your position to be that you are not obligated to provide to us any documents under Rule 26. 3. We understand your position to be that, despite the “best efforts” clause in the CVRA and your obligation to treat victims with fairness, you can withhold evidence from the victims that will help them prove CVRA violations. For example, we understand you to take the position that you can withhold the other half of the U.S. Attorney’s correspondence, correspondence between the Department and Ken Starr and Lillian on behalf of Epstein, and information about role in the Epstein case. In short, we understand you to be asserting a blanket position that you can withhold information that will help prove the victims’ CVRA case. If this is incorrect, please advise us promptly. If we have misunderstood you and you are willing to provide us relevant information, we will promptly provide you with a list of such information. If we have understood you correctly, we will be filing a motion with the Court shortly to block the Justice Department from suppressing such highly relevant information. 4. You still have not given us your position on the victims' motion to file an unsealed, unredacted pleading reciting the U.S. Attorney's correspondence. What is your position on that motion: We have been asking for your position on this motion for some time now. If we have not heard back from you by c.o.b. Wednesday, March 16, 2011, we will include in our pleadings the following statement: "The Justice Department attorneys handling this case have been contacted several times for their position on this issue but have refused to respond to give their position." EFTA00206366 Thanks you in advance for your assistance. Sincerely, Paul Cassell, Co-Counsel for Jane Doe Paul G. Cassell Ronald N. Boyce Presidential Professor of Criminal Law S. J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah http://www.law.utah.edu/profiles/default.asp?PersonID=57&name=Cassell,Paul CONFIDENTIAL: This electronic message - along with any/all attachments - is confidential. This message is intended only for the use of the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, the person responsible to deliver it to the intended recipient, you may not use, disseminate, distribute or copy this communication. If you have received this message in error, please immediately notify the sender by reply electronic mail and delete the original message. Thank you. Thanks - I know you are swamped. No rush, I just figured we should all talk since this case has so many moving parts. EFTA00206367 Agreed. Agents will be conducting the interview in Australia tomorrow night our time (Thursday Australia time). After that, I will know what we are really working with and will finish it up as quickly as I can. There is a lot to digest and unfortunately I have a lot of other pressing matters, too, but I am working as fast as I can. I think you mentioned last week that you were preparing a memo addressing some of the legal and strategic issues relating to a potential new investigation into Epstein and/or other targets. Once you’ve done that, we should probably set aside some time to chat about the case generally. Also, reached out to and me last week and raised some issues that we can discuss as well. Thanks. Re: Government's Position on Several Pending Issues? Still Waiting for Answer At the risk of stating the obvious, Cassell's approach seems to be to ratchet up the attacks against the office whenever he doesn't get exactly what he wants. Most of his e-mail deals with his efforts to embarrass the Office rather than the legal issue before Judge Marra. That being said, his statement that OPR "has begun an investigation" is not only irrelevant, but possibly incorrect. Since there is pending litigation, my guess is that OPR has not yet begun an investigation. My understanding based on another experience as well as on comments from OPR at the NAC is that they specifically do not begin investigations while there is pending litigation on the same subject matter as the referral. The fact that Cassell is the one who wrote the letter that we forwarded to OPR matters here as well. Cassell simply made an accusation and he is now trying to use the fact of an OPR investigation to give the illusion that there must be some merit to the allegation. I could be mistaken and it may just be semantics, but he seems wrong on this. From: (USAFLS) Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2011 07:39 PM EFTA00206368
To:(USAFLS);(USAFLS)
Cc:(USAFLS);(USAFLS)
Subject: FW: Government's Position on Several Pending Issues? Still Waiting for Answer
Here is Cassell’s response to our letter. On March 1, 2010, I sent an e-mail to at OPR, to whom I had referred Cassell’s letter asking for an inquiry. I asked if OPR had a policy about complainants having direct contact with investigating attorneys, since I was reluctant to provide name in the absence of consent. has not responded to my e-mail. I intend to provide the general phone number for OPR to Cassell. From: Paul Cassell [mailto:] Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2011 7:21 PM To: (USAFLS) **Cc:** . (USAFLS); Brad Edwards Subject: RE: Government's Position on Several Pending Issues? Still Waiting for Answer Dear Brad and I have received Mr. letter of today. We are deeply disappointed. We will file our court pleadings on Friday. Mr. letter still leaves unanswered a number of questions, which I am writing to raise with you - again. 1. You still have not provided, as you promised you would, the name of the person coordinating the OPR investigation. As a result we have not been able to obtain any information about the status of the investigation. Just to be clear, we intend to include in our filing information that OPR has begun an investigation and to include the information that we currently have about – we assume that making that information public will not compromise OPR's work. 2. We will be making initial disclosures to you under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure shortly. We have not heard back from you on whether you will be making parallel disclosures. Accordingly, we understand your position to be that you are not obligated to provide to us any documents under Rule 26. EFTA00206369 3. We understand your position to be that, despite the “best efforts” clause in the CVRA and your obligation to treat victims with fairness, you can withhold evidence from the victims that will help them prove CVRA violations. For example, we understand you to take the position that you can withhold the other half of the U.S. Attorney’s correspondence, correspondence between the Department and Ken Starr and Lillian on behalf of Epstein, and information about role in the Epstein case. In short, we understand you to be asserting a blanket position that you can withhold information that will help prove the victims’ CVRA case. If this is incorrect, please advise us promptly. If we have misunderstood you and you are willing to provide us relevant information, we will promptly provide you with a list of such information. If we have understood you correctly, we will be filing a motion with the Court shortly to block the Justice Department from suppressing such highly relevant information. 4. You still have not given us your position on the victims' motion to file an unsealed, unredacted pleading reciting the U.S. Attorney's correspondence. What is your position on that motion: We have been asking for your position on this motion for some time now. If we have not heard back from you by c.o.b. Wednesday, March 16, 2011, we will include in our pleadings the following statement: "The Justice Department attorneys handling this case have been contacted several times for their position on this issue but have refused to respond to give their position." Thanks you in advance for your assistance. Sincerely, Paul Cassell, Co-Counsel for Jane Doe Paul G. Cassell Ronald N. Boyce Presidential Professor of Criminal Law S. J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah http://www.law.utah.edu/profiles/default.asp?PersonID=57&name=Cassell,Paul CONFIDENTIAL: This electronic message - along with any/all attachments - is confidential. This message is intended only for the use of the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, the person responsible to deliver it to the intended recipient, you may not use, disseminate, distribute or copy this communication. If you have received this message in error, please immediately notify the sender by reply electronic mail and delete the original message. Thank you.