Jeffrey Epstein lavished cash on lawyers’ charities after sweetheart plea deal
EXCERPT
Convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was so thrilled with the sweetheart plea deal his legal dream team scored for him in Florida, that he threw in an added bonus — nearly $1 million worth of donations to their favorite charities, including a tony Manhattan prep school.
In 2007, while two Manhattan-based criminal defense lawyers were finalizing Epstein’s deal, which included 13 months in a Palm Beach County jail and freedom from federal criminal prosecution, Epstein was writing checks to their charities.
Epstein’s C.O.U.Q. non-profit donated $500,000 in 2007 to the Ramaz School on the Upper East Side where attorney Jay Lefkowitz was a prominent member of the school’s Orthodox Jewish community.
Epstein’s private foundation also donated $250,000 to the Washington-based Foundation for Criminal Justice where another attorney, Gerald Lefcourt, was a board member in 2007, public filings show.
Both of the contributions were one-time donations from the charity, which was founded in 1998 by Epstein and former gal pal Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the late British media mogul Robert Maxwell who has been accused by three women of procuring girls to work as sex slaves for Epstein.
It’s not clear what prompted the donations, and neither Lecourt nor Lefkowitz returned The Post’s emails and calls seeking comment.
A former senior advisor to both Presidents Bush, Lefkowitz’s three children attended the school. Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, who served as principal of the school between 1966 and 2015, married Lefkowitz and his wife Elena Neuman in 1991.
Neuman, a documentary filmmaker, has made films for the Ramaz School, according to her LinkedIn profile. The couple donated between $25,000 to $99,000 to the school’s annual campaign in 2010, according to the Ramaz Magazine.
A very small price for 12 more years of freedom.