THE GREATEST HEIST BOOK 2 | Chapter 4 The Storm

34 victims and an airtight case. A sure thing—until Ken Starr arrived.

January 27, 1998

Studio lights. A couch. The morning-soft set of NBC’s Today Show.

Matt Lauer leans forward. The question everyone in America is waiting for.

“Mrs. Clinton—do you believe the allegations are false?”

Hillary Clinton sits across from him. Composed. Coiled. She doesn’t blink.

“The great story here, for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it, is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.”

The dress. The stain. The testimony that would come. Kenneth Starr’s four hundred and forty-five pages dissecting every detail of Monica Lewinsky’s life.

For months, the phrase is a joke. Late-night punchlines. Republican mockery. Poor Hillary, defending her cheating husband with paranoid delusions.

Nine years later, Marie Villafaña will understand what Hillary meant.

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Late May 2007

Hurricane season. The air in Miami has that heavy, waiting quality—nothing visible yet, but the pressure is off just enough that people who grew up here notice.

Marie Villafaña moves through the U.S. Attorney’s Office with a stack of files under her arm. Thirty-four victims. Eighty-two page prosecution memo. Fifty-three page indictment ready to file.

Two years of work. FBI agents standing by in the Virgin Islands—Epstein judging a beauty pageant. The arrest set for May 15.

Washington signs off. The Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section sends their evaluation:

Exhaustive. Well done. Correctly focused.

Marie steps out of the copier room and nearly collides with Matthew Menchel.

“Marie.” He holds a single sheet. “CEOS evaluation just came back.”

She takes it. The words she already knows.

Exhaustive. Well done.

“Nice work,” Menchel says. Brisk. Too brisk. Like a man closing a door she didn’t realize she’d opened.

“Thanks.”

He keeps walking.

Back at her desk, Marie calls FBI agent Nesbitt Kuyrkendall.

“We got the evaluation. Exhaustive and well done.”

“Then we move,” he says. “Epstein’s still in the Virgin Islands.”

“I’m pushing for May fifteenth. Sloman says Acosta wants more time.”

“More time for what?”

“To be ‘comfortable.’”

A long pause.

“You’ve got thirty-four victims and Washington’s blessing. Comfortable about what?”

Marie looks at the clear Miami sky. Somewhere east of the Bahamas, the long season is starting.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know.”

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Late June 2007

The word moves through the office like electricity.

Marie is returning from the break room when she hears it—two paralegals whispering:

“Ken Starr. Can you believe it?”

“I heard he’s in with Acosta right now.”

Marie doesn’t break stride. The name ripples through the building—secretaries, junior prosecutors, even security murmuring it with the hush people use for a weather event.

Kenneth Starr.

She pulls the defense filings. Scrolls the signature blocks.

Alan Dershowitz. Gerald Lefcourt. Roy Black. Jay Lefkowitz. Jack Goldberger. Lilly Ann Sanchez.

And Kenneth W. Starr. Former Solicitor General. Former Independent Counsel. The man who tried to destroy Bill Clinton.

A formidable roster. And she sees it now—half of them Kirkland & Ellis alumni.
Old colleagues. Former mentors. A network closing ranks.

For Acosta, it’s political cover. A Republican U.S. Attorney can’t be accused of going easy on a Democratic donor—not if Kenneth Starr himself is asking him to.

Marie scrolls through background files—White House visitor logs. Epstein. Seventeen visits between 1993 and 1995. Receptions. Dinners. Events where his name appears next to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s.

While Kenneth Starr was investigating Clinton, Epstein was walking through the White House as a guest.

Now Starr is protecting Epstein.

Outside, the sky has turned the color of old concrete.

After the Paywall: Inside The Epstein Case