Lesley Groff says she never scheduled massages for underage girls

Lesley Groff told House Oversight Committee investigators she never scheduled massages for anyone she knew to be underage, placing a narrow denial at the center of Congress’s latest scrutiny of Jeffrey Epstein’s inner circle.

Groff’s closed-door interview took place in Room 2247 of the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, June 9, 2026. The session was transcribed, not under oath and not recorded, and it came as the committee examined Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and whether the pair sought to curry favor with elected officials.

Groff, now 59, worked for Epstein in New York for more than 18 years, from February 2001 until his death in 2019. In prepared remarks, she described Epstein as a “master manipulator” and said she hoped her testimony would dispel “false notions” that she knowingly enabled or conspired in his crimes. She said she was “not a conspirator.”

Her account focused on the daily massages she said she arranged for Epstein in New York. Groff said she never met the masseuses and never heard that any of them were minors or had been sexually abused. In her later transcript, she said, “I never met these women, so I didn't know if they were young or how old they were,” and added, “I thought that it was just something that he did, like going to the gym.”

Lawmakers met that account with skepticism. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi pressed Groff on whether she really never believed any of the people she scheduled for Epstein were minors, and a committee attorney asked whether a 14-year-old sounds the same as an adult. Rep. Stephen Lynch said Groff was maintaining that she did not know Epstein despite working for him for 18 years, while Rep. Robert Garcia noted that Epstein had described her as someone he was very close to. Rep. Yassamin Ansari said Groff also faced questions about arranging meetings between Epstein and Donald Trump before their fallout.

The committee’s files already place Groff deep inside the record. She was one of four women named as potential co-conspirators in Epstein’s 2007 non-prosecution agreement, which took effect on June 30, 2008, a deal later criticized by federal watchdogs. Groff said that designation remains her “scarlet letter.”

Her lawyers said prosecutors later told her in 2021 that she would not be charged, after she first faced FBI questions in New York that year. Even so, the Justice Department’s Epstein library includes more than 150,000 references to Groff’s name, and federal materials note that some victims told investigators they believed Groff knew the massage appointments were sexual.