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With regard to her comment about "avoid[ing] the press," Villafaña told OPR that her goal was to protect the anonymity of the victims. She said that the case was far more likely to be covered by the Palm Beach press, which had already written articles about Epstein, than in Miami, and "if [the victims] wanted to attend [the plea hearing], I wanted them to be able to go into the courthouse without their faces being splashed all over the newspaper." In evaluating the emails, OPR reviewed all the email exchanges between Villafaña, as well as Sloman and Acosta, and Lefkowitz and other defense counsel, including the portions redacted from the publicly released emails (except for a few to or from Acosta, copies of which OPR did not locate in the USAO records). OPR also considered the emails in the broader context of Villafaña's overall conduct during the federal investigation of Epstein. The documentary record, as well as witness and subject interviews, establishes that Villafaña consistently advocated in favor of prosecuting Epstein and worked for months toward that goal. She repeatedly pressed her supervisors for permission to indict Epstein and made numerous efforts to expand the scope of the case. She opposed meetings with the defense team, and nearly withdrew from the case because her supervisors agreed to those meetings. Villafaña objected to the decision to resolve the case through a guilty plea in state court, and she engaged in a lengthy and heated email exchange with Menchel about that subject. When she was assigned the task of creating an agreement to effect that resolution, Villafaña fought hard during the ensuing negotiations to hold the USAO's position despite defense counsel's aggressive tactics. OPR also considered statements of her supervisors regarding her interactions with defense counsel. Sloman, in particular, told OPR that reports that Villafaña "was soft on Epstein . . . couldn't have been further from the truth." Sloman added that Villafaña "did her best to implement the decisions that were made and to hold Epstein accountable." Lourie similarly told OPR that when he read the district court's February 2019 opinion in the CVRA litigation and the emails from Villafaña cited in that opinion, he was "surprised to see how nice she was to them. And she winds up taking it on the chin for being so nice to them. When I know the whole time she was the one who wanted to go after him the most." The AUSA who assisted Villafaña on the investigation told OPR "everything that [Villafaña] did . . . was, as far as I could tell, [ ] completely pro prosecution." Because the emails in question were publicly disclosed without context and without other information showing Villafaña's consistent efforts to prosecute Epstein and to assist victims, a public narrative developed that Villafaña colluded with defense counsel to benefit Epstein at the expense of the victims. After thoroughly reviewing all of the available evidence, OPR finds that narrative to be inaccurate. The USAO's and Villafaña's interactions with the victims can be criticized, as OPR does in several respects in this Report, but the evidence is clear that any missteps Villafaña may have made in her interactions with victims or their attorneys were not made for the purpose of silencing victims. Rather, the evidence shows that Villafaña, in particular, cared deeply about Epstein's victims. Before the NPA was signed, she raised to her supervisors the issue of consulting with victims, and after the NPA was signed, she drafted letters to notify victims identified in the federal investigation of the pending state plea proceeding and inviting them to appear. The draft letters led defense counsel to argue to Department management that Villafaña and Sloman committed professional misconduct by "threaten[ing] to send a highly improper and unusual 'victim notification letter' to all" of the listed victims. Given the full context of Villafaña's conduct throughout her tenure on the case, OPR concludes that her explanations for her emails are 165 DOJ-OGR-00023203