After the Department of Justice released the latest round of Epstein files in January, a barrage of high-powered individuals named in the documents lost jobs, resigned from boards, and were otherwise ushered out of public life. And yet, one of the women most closely entwined with Jeffrey Epstein, his executive assistant, Lesley Groff, has faced limited scrutiny. In her latest Epstein investigation, Free Press reporter Tanya Lukyanova dives into the remarkably normal life of the woman Epstein once said he could not lose. This is a story about who has paid a price for their connections to Epstein, who hasn’t, and why. —The Editors

On March 2, Daniel LaGattuta rose to speak at a meeting of the New Canaan Republican Town Committee (RTC), a group dedicated to electing GOP candidates at both the local and national levels. He wanted to discuss what he called the “Lesley Groff problem.”

Groff, 59, is a longtime resident of New Canaan, Connecticut, an upscale suburb of some 20,000 people. She had also spent much of her career as Jeffrey Epstein’s executive assistant. She kept the convicted sex offender’s schedule; managed his day-to-day, overseeing everything from his haircuts to his daily massage appointments, many of which were code for “sex,” according to victims; and made the arrangements for the young women Epstein took to his Caribbean island and his ranch in New Mexico. Groff was so plugged into Epstein’s affairs that her name appears over 150,000 times in the recently released Department of Justice files. Only Epstein’s name appears more often.

In New Canaan, Groff and her husband, Ike, had a long history of donating to the RTC and Republican candidates, a fact that greatly troubled LaGattuta. The Groffs had paid $1,000 to attend a local fundraiser in October 2023, and another $1,000 for an RTC gala seven months later. And they made campaign contributions, as well. On several occasions, LaGattuta told the RTC that taking political donations from someone so close to Epstein was going to cause problems for the New Canaan Republican Town Committee.

Hoping to rally his fellow Republicans, LaGattuta laid it all out at the March 2 meeting. Groff, he pointed out, was listed as a suspected co-conspirator in the un-redacted FBI files that were released by the DOJ. She was a key member of Epstein’s inner circle, he said. She was even the reason New Canaan was mentioned more than a thousand times in the Epstein files. Associating with Groff, he concluded, was “morally abhorrent and a political catastrophe.” If they had any sense, he said, New Canaan Republicans would renounce her contributions and donate the money to an organization for victims of sexual abuse.

But once again, New Canaan Republicans, many of whom were friends of the Groffs, ignored LaGattuta.

Ever since the release of more than three million pages of Epstein emails and documents in January, many powerful people—figures like Larry Summers, Leon Black, Bill Gates, Peter Mandelson, and former Prince Andrew—have been ostracized and punished professionally because of their association with Epstein. (All of them have denied wrongdoing.) We’ve seen high-profile person after person issue the standard apology for ever being in Epstein’s life before taking the obligatory step back to reflect, whether or not they were complicit in unlawful or even just unsavory acts. For some, a mere email correspondence with Epstein cost them their job. Yet the woman who sat in the office next to his for nearly 20 years has somehow managed to resume her life in New Canaan as if Epstein had never been a part of it. In the sweeping Epstein reckoning, Groff is an anomaly. She doesn’t just make political donations—she goes to parties, hosts game nights, and dines at upscale restaurants with her friends and family.

Which makes one wonder: Does anyone in New Canaan even care?

Groff has long maintained her innocence. In a statement to The Free Press, her lawyer Michael Bachner insisted that throughout her tenure with Epstein, Groff “never witnessed or was told of anything illegal related to these massages.”

“Epstein lived in two worlds—one legitimate and the other not—and made sure they did not collide,” Bachner wrote in an email. “Indeed, it is our strong position that Epstein purposefully kept Lesley isolated from his criminal conduct since he had no reason to confide in her and every reason to lie.”

And while Groff has indeed been listed as a suspected co-conspirator, the government has never brought charges against her.

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But could she really have been entirely unaware of what was going on around her during her employment with Epstein? She began working with him in February 2001, seven years before he pleaded guilty in Florida to soliciting prostitution with a minor, and stayed on until the day Epstein was arrested by the feds as he stepped off a plane at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey in July of 2019.

In 2021, Groff gave a long interview to the FBI in which she discussed how she landed the job, and how her relationship with her boss evolved over time. (The interview was part of Groff’s proffer agreement, which allowed her to explain her role in Epstein’s operations in exchange for limited protections.)

While working as a salesperson at Nordstrom, she was approached by a headhunter, who asked if she was interested in “a job to organize one man’s life.” She was interviewed by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who, of course, would later be convicted for her role in a conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to transport minors to participate in illegal sex acts, transporting a minor to participate in illegal sex acts, sex trafficking conspiracy, and sex trafficking of a minor. Groff said she had to sign a nondisclosure agreement that carried a potential $100,000 fine.

Years later, in a Thanksgiving email to Epstein, Groff would fondly recall their first meeting: “I am so thankful I walked into your office in Feb. of 2001 for the position of ‘Manhattan Socialite Assistant’. I had no idea what I was getting in to,” she wrote. “You asked me if I minded the word ‘fuck.’ I said ‘no I’ve heard the word lots before.’ ”

She started five days later.

From day one, Groff’s job was to manage Epstein’s time. Each morning, he would hand her pages of calls, meetings, and people he wanted to see, she told the FBI. That list included figures like then-Prince Andrew, former president Bill Clinton, Woody Allen, and scores of other elites.

She contacted drivers, pilots, chefs, maids, decorators, vendors, bodyguards, accountants, and personal assistants, often juggling multiple phones at once. Socializing with Epstein or his contacts was strictly off-limits. “You’re here to work,” Groff recalled Maxwell telling her early on. Even small talk was discouraged: If Groff purchased movie tickets for Epstein, she was not to ask afterward how he liked the film.

That strict professional distance was by design, Groff’s lawyer, Bachner, told The Free Press. Epstein “publicly and privately lambasted Lesley when he believed that she might be crossing the line by becoming friendly with his political or celebrity friends,” he added. When Epstein found out that Groff attended a “particular social function” early in her tenure, he threatened to fire her before putting her on “probation” instead.

“Not surprisingly, Lesley never socialized with Epstein,” Bachner said. “Lesley now realizes that Epstein made her a face of his legitimate world. It is no wonder she was included on so many emails.”