Members of a Republican-led House committee investigating Jeffrey Epstein have referred two men to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution after a survivor’s sexual assault allegations.
Former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine and hairstylist Frédéric Fekkai are the first names to emerge from the House Oversight Committee after lawmakers began reviewing the federal government’s handling of the investigations into the dead sex offender and alleged ties to a wider network of powerful abusers.
The referral follows the committee’s interview with Epstein’s former assistant Sarah Kellen on May 21.
She testified about the “horrific abuse she endured for years” involving Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, the committee’s Republican chair James Comer said Thursday.
“Ms. Kellen provided new information crucial to our investigation that is helping to bring transparency for the American people and accountability for survivors,” he added.
Those “serious allegations of criminal misconduct” are now in the hands of the Justice Department, “which has the tools to investigate criminal misconduct,” Comer said.
In a letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Comer and four other House Republicans urged the Justice Department to use “all available tools” — including providing “immunity for certain witnesses” — to investigate Kellen’s allegations.
Levine’s name appears more than 600 times throughout the millions of documents released by the Justice Department related to federal investigations into Epstein, and Comer’s letter describes Fekkai as a “close friend” of Epstein who “played a role in his grooming schemes by routinely providing salon services to women at Mr. Epstein's instruction.”
According to a newly released transcript of her closed-door interview with the committee, Kellen accused both men of sexually assaulting her in separate incidents.
A spokesperson for Levine has denied the allegations.
“Nearly a quarter century ago, our client had a brief intimate encounter with another consenting adult. Any allegation suggesting otherwise is not true,” the person told The Independent.
None of the men have been charged with a crime in connection with Epstein, and the inclusion of one’s name in the so-called Epstein files is not evidence of wrongdoing.
The Independent could not immediately reach a representative for Fekkai for comment.
She also accused French fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier of exposing himself to her, according to the transcript. He died in 2022.
Kellen was among four potential co-conspirators named in Epstein’s 2007 controversial “non-prosecution agreement” that helped him evade more serious criminal charges in Florida.
She has denied wrongdoing in connection with the case. In her opening statement to the committee, she said Epstein had sexually and psychologically abused her for more than a decade.
“I was trapped inside Jeffrey Epstein's world,” she said. “He groomed me, sexually and psychologically abused me, controlled me, manipulated me, dominated me, and gaslit me until I could no longer tell which thoughts were mine and which were his.”
She said she was never contacted by any federal, state, local or foreign law enforcement agency from the time she began working for Epstein in the early 2000s until July 2019, after which she spoke to federal prosecutors in New York.
Epstein died in jail while awaiting trial on trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide.
“He was terrifying,” she told the committee. “He was completely dominating of everything in my life.”
Fekkai had introduced her to Epstein in 2000 or 2001 as a “Victoria’s Secret model scout,” she said.
The hairstylist had asked her to “come be in a hair show that didn’t exist” in Maui, according to her closed-door interview.
“I didn’t have any money to get my own hotel room or fly back, and he took advantage of me that night,” Kellen said.
She alleges that Levine “basically forced himself on me” while he was staying with Epstein and Ghislaine in Satin-Tropez one summer.
“We were kind of all walking, and I think it was Jeffrey and Ghislaine were kind of ahead of us, and then there was me and Philip,” she told the committee. “And then there was, like, this wooden kind of shack on the beach. And he just, like, grabbed my hand and pulled me into the shack.”
Kellen’s interview also details the alleged abuse she experienced under Epstein and new allegations against Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for trafficking and conspiring with Epstein to abuse young women and girls.
She described Maxwell appearing on Kellen’s bed naked on Epstein’s Little St. James Island, “touching me and showing me how touch Jeffrey and what he liked,” she said.
Maxwell helped turn Epstein “into the monster that he became,” she said.
“She was mean and belittling,” Kellen told the committee. “She would literally call me her slave, her minion, piglet, polyp on a donkey’s ass. Like, she would belittle you as much as she could to make herself more superior.”
Though she worked for Epstein for nearly 20 years, she recalled meeting his one-time ally Donald Trump only once for “maybe five minutes,” she said.
She met the future president at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in 2002 or 2003, when she accompanied Epstein to use the gym at the compound, Kellen told lawmakers. She assumed Trump and Epstein were “friendly” because Epstein displayed “the same photos” of prominent figures in his orbit at all of his properties.
Trump, who has distanced himself from Epstein after their years-long relationship fell apart in the early 2000s, appears throughout the Epstein files. The documents revealed that prosecutors discovered he was a passenger on Epstein’s private plane more than previously understood.
The president is not accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein’s crimes, and one’s inclusion in the documents does not suggest otherwise.
Kellen also recalled meeting Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, former Prince Andrew, Ehud Barak and Leon Black, among others, though she did not accuse any of those men of wrongdoing.
The latest developments follow a series of depositions with high-profile figures in Epstein’s orbit and the officials investigating them, including former Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was accused of avoiding questions about the president and pushing responsibility for the Epstein investigation on her now-successor Todd Blanche.
Trump and his administration have been desperate to wind down public scrutiny into Epstein and federal law enforcement’s handling of the cases against him and Maxwell. Blanche has also sought to close the book on the Justice Department probes, telling Fox News earlier this year that the release of the Epstein files “should not be part of anything going forward” at the department.
More than a dozen Epstein survivors who have repeatedly called on the Justice Department to investigate their claims and Epstein’s alleged co-conspirator say Blanche or Bondi have never reached out to them. Blanche testified to members of Congress that he has met with survivors and “many” of their lawyers, however they say those claims are false and “strain credulity.”
