Federal authorities have opened an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s former attorney and accountant, a senior law enforcement official familiar with the probe told NBC News on Tuesday.
The lawyer, Darren Indyke, and the accountant, Richard Kahn, are administrators and executors of Epstein’s estate.
Interviews with witnesses have been ongoing, according to the law enforcement official, who could not confirm potential charges or allegations under review or a possible timeline for the case.
The Justice Department said in a statement that “we don’t comment on the existence, or lack thereof, of investigations. We have always said with regard to Epstein that if the evidence presents itself, we will investigate.”
Daniel Ruzumna, an attorney for Indyke and Kahn, said in a statement that the two had not been subpoenaed or asked to speak with federal prosecutors and have not been told they are the subjects or targets of any investigation. The focus and scope of the investigation were unclear, he said.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the probe.
Ruzumna said his clients are aware that federal prosecutors recently asked to speak with at least one person who “provided services” to Epstein.
He pointed to documents released in connection with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Donald Trump signed last year, and said the documents showed that federal prosecutors did not consider Indyke and Kahn to be among Epstein’s potential co-conspirators during an investigation in 2018 and 2019.
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, where he was jailed awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which had been in the process of prosecuting Epstein when he died and secured a conviction against accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, declined to comment.
Indyke and Kahn testified before the House Oversight Committee this year, Ruzumna said, and have given depositions in multiple lawsuits related to Epstein.
“Not a single individual has ever accused Mr. Indyke or Mr. Kahn of sexual abuse or trafficking, and they reject any suggestion that they were complicit in or in any way knowingly facilitated Mr. Epstein’s sexual abuse or trafficking — conduct that by all accounts occurred behind closed doors, in secluded locations, and at times when neither Mr. Indyke nor Mr. Kahn was present,” Ruzumna said.
Last week, the two men were named as defendants in their capacity as executors of his will in a lawsuit filed in federal court. Two women who say their photos were found in Epstein’s collection of sexually explicit images of children sued, saying they want Epstein’s estate to preserve and account for everything seized from his properties.
“We want a real, court-supervised process to identify and notify every survivor depicted in that collection,” said the attorney, Hillary Nappi. “Many of them have no idea their images exist in his files, and they deserve to know, and they deserve the chance to seek justice.”
An attorney for Indyke and Kahn said Wednesday that the lawsuit names them only in their capacity as co-executors of the Epstein estate, not as individuals.
