Testimony could be used in efforts to corroborate accounts by the financier’s accusers
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have subpoenaed Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime personal pilots, according to people familiar with the matter, as investigators seek to question the financier’s employees in the wake of his indictment on sex-trafficking charges.
The grand jury subpoenas were served on the pilots earlier this month after Mr. Epstein’s arrest on July 6, some of the people said. Mr. Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey after he had returned from Paris on a private jet.
A lawyer for one of the pilots confirmed the subpoena, but declined to provide further details.
It couldn’t be determined what information the subpoenas sought, how many pilots were subpoenaed or whether the pilots have agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
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Testimony from the pilots could be used by federal investigators in their efforts to corroborate accounts from Mr. Epstein’s accusers. They could also provide detail on Mr. Epstein’s travels and his associates. Some of the pilots were responsible for keeping flight logs of passengers who flew on Mr. Epstein’s private jet, according to court filings.
Mr. Epstein, who was denied bail and will remain in federal custody pending trial, has pleaded not guilty to sex-trafficking charges stemming from what prosecutors allege was a yearslong scheme from 2002 to 2005 to recruit and sexually abuse dozens of girls.
Mr. Epstein’s lawyers didn’t respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.
In a recent court filing, prosecutors said that entities controlled by Mr. Epstein own at least two private jets in active service, and that at least one of them is capable of traveling internationally. He frequently traveled by private jet between his homes in New York and Palm Beach, Fla., according to the indictment against him. Mr. Epstein’s lawyers said he owns one private jet and sold the other one last month.
Women in civil lawsuits have accused Mr. Epstein of conspiring with his pilots and other associates from at least 1998 to 2002 to facilitate sex abuse and avoid law-enforcement detection. One woman has said in court filings that when she was a minor in 2000, Mr. Epstein transported her regularly on his private jet to be sexually exploited by his associates and friends.
A lawyer for Mr. Epstein said recently in court that Mr. Epstein didn’t engage in sex trafficking, arguing there was no violence or coercion in his interactions with the alleged victims. Mr. Epstein and his associates have settled many of the civil suits. The women haven’t sued the pilots.
Mr. Epstein’s flight itineraries came under scrutiny in 2005, during an investigation by Palm Beach police and federal prosecutors in Miami into similar allegations against Mr. Epstein, according to police reports.
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The investigation ended in 2007 with a nonprosecution deal that protected Mr. Epstein and his alleged co-conspirators from federal charges in the Florida investigation. In exchange, he pleaded guilty to two state counts related to prostitution, registered as a sex offender and served a 13-month sentence. A series of Miami Herald articles late last year drew renewed attention to the deal.
Soon after the deal was finalized, women who said they were sexually abused by Mr. Epstein began filing lawsuits against him, a legal process that allowed their lawyers to depose Mr. Epstein’s associates and obtain dozens of pages of his private jet flight logs.
Mr. Epstein employed David Rodgers, Larry Visoski, Larry Morrison and Bill Hammond as pilots and flight engineers, according to court filings. Mr. Rodgers, Mr. Visoski and Mr. Morrison have previously testified in civil depositions. The four men didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Flight logs signed by Mr. Rodgers, which became public through civil lawsuits, showed dozens of passengers on Mr. Epstein’s jet from 1997 to 2005. Some women have said in civil lawsuits that their names appear in the flight logs, which they said would corroborate their allegations of being trafficked by Mr. Epstein’s associates when they were underage.
Lawyers for the women also alleged in a 2015 court filing that the flight logs provided by Mr. Rodgers were incomplete. “It would not be surprising to find that some of these flight logs…were likely designed to hide evidence of criminal activity—or perhaps later cleansed of such evidence,” the lawyers wrote.
Investigators may be interested in asking Mr. Epstein’s pilots whether they witnessed any efforts by Mr. Epstein to interfere with law enforcement, according to legal experts. In recent court filings, prosecutors have accused Mr. Epstein of tampering with witnesses, an allegation that Mr. Epstein’s lawyers denied in court.
Federal prosecutors in Miami and Mr. Epstein’s lawyers in 2007 negotiated over the possibility of Mr. Epstein pleading guilty to obstruction of justice, including for an incident involving one of his pilots, according to emails that became public in civil lawsuits.
In a Sept. 19, 2007, email, a lawyer for Mr. Epstein offered a statement to the government that said Mr. Epstein changed his flight plan to land in the U.S. Virgin Islands instead of New Jersey after he learned that one of his associates was contacted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Epstein was never charged with obstruction of justice.
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