Audrey Strauss
Snapshot
| Field | Documented information |
|---|---|
| Public identity | Audrey Strauss, American attorney and former federal prosecutor |
| Principal Epstein role | Deputy U.S. Attorney during the 2019 Epstein case and head of SDNY during Maxwell’s arrest and pretrial prosecution |
| Return to SDNY | Appointed Senior Counsel on February 5, 2018 |
| Deputy appointment | Announced March 22, 2019, to succeed Robert Khuzami on his April departure |
| Office leadership | Acting U.S. Attorney from June 20, 2020; court appointment as U.S. Attorney effective January 16, 2021; succeeded by Damian Williams in October 2021 |
| Maxwell arrest | Announced the federal prosecution on July 2, 2020 |
| Initial charges | Enticement and transportation offenses, related conspiracies and two perjury counts |
| Later indictment | March 29, 2021 superseding indictment added sex trafficking charges and additional alleged conduct |
| Trial boundary | Maxwell’s November and December 2021 trial occurred after Strauss’s leadership tenure |
| Released records | Named in prison visit planning, prosecution documents, Prince Andrew interview correspondence and an OPR report transmittal |
| Current professional listing | Senior Counsel at Fried Frank, in white collar defense, regulatory enforcement and investigations |
| Essential distinction | Strauss was a prosecutor and supervisor, not an alleged participant in Epstein’s abuse |
| Last checked | October 7, 2026 |
Audrey Strauss led the Southern District of New York when federal authorities arrested Ghislaine Maxwell in July 2020. She had already served in the office’s senior leadership during the 2019 prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein. Her importance to the record lies in the transition from the case against Epstein, who died before trial, to the separate prosecution of Maxwell.
Her succession to Geoffrey Berman also made her a central figure in the June 2020 dispute over leadership of the prosecutor’s office. She took charge less than two weeks before Maxwell’s arrest and remained in office through the expansion of the indictment and much of the pretrial litigation. Damian Williams headed SDNY when the case reached trial, verdict and sentencing.
The released documents add detail beyond the charging announcement. They record efforts to arrange an interview with Prince Andrew, objections to prosecutors’ public statements and an actual confidentiality proposal from SDNY. Other records place Strauss on a proposed prison inspection list and identify her as the recipient of a Justice Department report. These are records of official work. They do not establish involvement by Strauss in Epstein’s criminal conduct.
Important Points
- Strauss’s relevant roles changed over time. She was Senior Counsel, then Deputy U.S. Attorney, then Acting U.S. Attorney and finally a court appointed U.S. Attorney.
- Geoffrey S. Berman headed SDNY when Epstein was charged in July 2019. Strauss headed it when Maxwell was arrested in July 2020.
- The initial Maxwell indictment and the March 2021 superseding indictment were different charging instruments. Later trafficking counts should not be backdated to the original announcement.
- Strauss announced allegations in 2020. The jury’s findings came in December 2021, after her successor took office.
- Maxwell’s lawyers challenged Strauss’s public comments as prejudicial. Judge Alison J. Nathan denied the requested gag order without prejudice and warned all counsel to comply with professional rules.
- Prince Andrew’s lawyers also complained about publicity. The released email chain includes SDNY’s response offering confidential negotiations, not merely the complaint.
- A November 2020 OPR letter expressly said its investigation had not involved Strauss’s office. Receiving that report did not make her a subject of the investigation.
- A name in an institutional signature block does not prove that the named office head personally wrote every sentence or carried out every investigative act.
- No record discussed here establishes that Strauss negotiated the Florida nonprosecution agreement, participated in Epstein’s abuse or was adjudicated responsible for prosecutorial misconduct in this matter.
Career and Return to the Southern District
The Justice Department’s February 2018 appointment announcement described a lawyer returning to an office where she had previously tried more than twenty cases and served as chief of criminal appeals and of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Unit. Her earlier government career included work for the independent counsel investigating Iran Contra. Her private practice included partnerships at Mudge Rose and Fried Frank, followed by service as Alcoa’s vice president and chief legal officer.
Strauss graduated from Barnard College and Columbia Law School. The later SIFMA professional biography dates those degrees to 1968 and 1971 and records her leadership of Fried Frank’s white collar practice from 1995 to 2012. The early SDNY service dates differ between the 2018 DOJ announcement and later professional biographies, so the important, consistently documented point is her substantial prosecutorial experience before returning in 2018.
The March 22, 2019 leadership announcement selected Strauss to replace Deputy U.S. Attorney Robert Khuzami on his April 12 departure. Craig Stewart was named Chief Counsel in the same announcement. The announcement date therefore should not be treated as the date on which every new appointment took effect.
When the office charged Epstein in July 2019, Strauss was part of its leadership under Berman. That supervisory position is distinct from the work of the assistant U.S. attorneys handling the prosecution and from the authority of Judge Richard M. Berman, who presided over Epstein’s criminal case. Geoffrey Berman and Richard Berman were different people with different responsibilities.
The June 2020 Leadership Dispute
Attorney General William Barr’s June 19 announcement said President Donald Trump intended to nominate Jay Clayton and that New Jersey U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito would serve temporarily in New York beginning July 3. It also described Geoffrey Berman as stepping down.
Berman disputed that account the same evening. He said he had not resigned and emphasized the continuation of the office’s investigations. The following day, his departure statement expressly tied his immediate departure to Barr’s decision that Strauss would become Acting U.S. Attorney through the normal succession process.
The practical result was continuity through a senior prosecutor already inside the office. Strauss did not arrive from outside SDNY to begin the Maxwell investigation in July. The succession matters to understanding who led the office at the arrest, but the timing alone does not prove that the Epstein investigation caused Berman’s removal. Nor does it establish that Strauss was carrying out a political instruction concerning Maxwell.
The district court’s later appointment was announced on December 22, 2020, effective January 16, 2021, under 28 U.S.C. § 546(d). It changed the basis of her tenure from acting leadership to a judicial appointment. In a January 19 announcement, she named Ilan Graff as Deputy U.S. Attorney and Russell Capone as Chief Counsel, with their new roles also effective January 16.
Announcing the Maxwell Prosecution
The July 2, 2020 charging announcement named Strauss, FBI New York chief William Sweeney Jr. and NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea. It described alleged conduct involving girls as young as fourteen, principally during 1994 through 1997, and separate allegations that Maxwell lied in 2016 civil depositions. The case was assigned to Judge Alison J. Nathan.
The initial six counts covered enticement, transportation, the corresponding conspiracies and two perjury offenses. The release expressly preserved the presumption of innocence. It named Alex Rossmiller, Alison Moe and Maurene Comey as the assistant U.S. attorneys in charge and placed the case in SDNY’s Public Corruption Unit. Those credits distinguish the office leader announcing the case from the prosecutors conducting its daily litigation.
A copy of the announcement in EFTA00010990, also available as a released-document PDF, illustrates why a prosecutor’s name appears in the Epstein files. The document records public law enforcement activity. Its presence in a later disclosure collection does not create a new allegation about the official it names.
The government’s July 2 detention memorandum, filed as Document 4 in case 20 Cr. 330, argued that Maxwell posed a substantial flight risk. Prosecutors relied on the seriousness of the charges, the asserted strength of the evidence, international connections and financial resources. They asked the judge to deny bail. This was an advocacy submission subject to judicial decision, not an order issued by Strauss.
The official case chronology records that Maxwell pleaded not guilty at the July 14 arraignment and that Nathan ordered detention pending trial. A detention decision addresses the statutory conditions for release. It is not a criminal conviction.
Publicity Complaints and the Court’s Response
Maxwell’s July 21, 2020 application, Document 27, asked Nathan to restrict extrajudicial statements by the government, its agents and lawyers for witnesses. Defense counsel Jeffrey Pagliuca argued that comments by Strauss, Sweeney and survivor lawyers risked prejudicing an impartial jury. The filing specifically challenged Strauss’s characterization of the alleged conduct and of Maxwell’s deposition testimony.
Those were arguments by Maxwell’s defense. The filing did not itself establish a professional rule violation. It also dealt with several speakers, so criticism directed at an FBI official or a private attorney should not be silently reassigned to Strauss.
Nathan’s July 23 order, Document 28, denied the application without prejudice. The judge expected compliance with local rules and professional responsibilities and said additional action was not then necessary to protect Maxwell’s fair trial rights. She also warned that she would act if violations occurred. The result was neither the broad gag order Maxwell requested nor a license for unrestricted commentary.
The defense returned to Strauss’s language in October 2021. Document 382, filed October 29, quoted her description of Maxwell’s case as a “prequel” to the Epstein case and argued that publicity and public pressure were relevant to the quality of the investigation. The passage appears on PDF page 42, printed brief page 34, stamped DOJ-OGR-00005497.
That later filing shows the defense’s proposed use of an earlier public statement. It does not prove that Strauss’s remarks were admitted as trial evidence or that the jury accepted the defense’s theory. The application’s argument about investigative motives must remain attributed to the lawyers making it.
Prince Andrew Interview Negotiations
The correspondence collected in EFTA00023791 supplies a more complete account of the dispute over interviewing Prince Andrew than a single quotation from either side. On July 13, 2020, Blackfords partner Gary Bloxsome objected to public commentary by Berman and Strauss and sought assurances about the confidentiality of interview arrangements. The PDF’s third page preserves that complaint.
The preceding page records a July 14 response from SDNY proposing confidential negotiations through July 28. The proposal covered public comment during that period and how the parties could describe a completed interview. On July 16, Bloxsome thanked the correspondent for the constructive approach and said he would respond further. Earlier messages in the chain show disagreement over voluntary cooperation and possible compelled process.
These emails establish an exchange and a proposal, not a completed agreement or interview. The government correspondent’s identity is redacted, so the message should be attributed to Strauss’s office rather than to her personally. The record also prevents a misleading account that reproduces Bloxsome’s complaint while omitting SDNY’s subsequent response. Seeking evidence from Andrew does not by itself establish that he committed a crime.
Prison Inspection Planning After Epstein’s Death
The compilation EFTA00044963 contains an August 13, 2019 email listing Strauss among proposed visitors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office to the Metropolitan Correctional Center. She was then Berman’s deputy. The list also visibly names Berman, Laura Birger, Craig Stewart and Nicholas Roos; part of the list is redacted.
PDF page 237, individually stamped EFTA00045199, asks to see the psychological observation and suicide watch areas, the Special Housing Unit and Epstein’s cell. It requests an escort by the jail’s legal personnel and says the visiting prosecutors would not speak with guards because investigations were ongoing. The original image confirms the floor references, which the OCR text partly garbles.
Page 283, stamped EFTA00045245, forwards the proposed Thursday, August 15 visit and discusses arranging a time. These planning records are narrower than an inspection report: they establish Strauss’s inclusion in the requested visit, not what she observed, concluded or later directed. They do not support an allegation that she interfered with evidence or controlled the medical determination concerning Epstein’s death.
Receiving the Office of Professional Responsibility Report
OPR’s November 12, 2020 letter addressed Strauss as Acting U.S. Attorney and transmitted the department’s investigation of the Southern District of Florida’s resolution of its 2006 through 2008 Epstein investigation and its interactions with victims. The one-page reproduction expressly said OPR’s investigation had not involved her office; the report was being supplied because of possible relevance to ongoing litigation.
The letter also said DOJ was releasing the executive summary, did not plan to publish the full report at that time and would provide the report to Congress on request. It noted possible future disclosure through Freedom of Information Act proceedings. This records the department’s stated publication position in November 2020, not an independently established decision by Strauss to suppress the report.
The publicly released executive summary concerns the earlier Florida resolution. Strauss’s receipt of later review material does not place her among the officials who negotiated that original agreement. The distinction is particularly important because the agreement subsequently became a defense issue in Maxwell’s New York case.
The Expanded Indictment and Pretrial Decisions
The March 29, 2021 second superseding indictment, Document 187, added sex trafficking conspiracy and substantive sex trafficking allegations. It extended the charging narrative beyond the initial 1990s allegations and included conduct alleged during 2001 through 2004. Strauss was U.S. Attorney at this stage. The new indictment remained a charging instrument, not proof of guilt.
The court’s pretrial rulings, including the August 13, 2021 opinion filed as Document 317, addressed Maxwell’s attempts to defeat the expanded charges before trial. Nathan rejected the claim that the Florida agreement barred this New York prosecution and rejected renewed claims of prejudicial charging delay. Some questions about overlapping conspiracy counts were left for later treatment rather than resolved by assuming every count could produce a separate sentence.
The same opinion distinguished ordinary impeachment material from genuinely exculpatory information and reiterated prosecutors’ disclosure obligations. That distinction matters when assessing later claims about what the prosecution should have disclosed. A court’s decision not to accelerate a category of disclosures is not a finding that prosecutors may conceal exculpatory evidence.
The official case updates also record the separation of the perjury charges from the other counts and the postponement of the initially planned July 2021 trial. The eventual November trial should therefore not be described as a trial of every allegation Strauss announced in July 2020.
Succession and the Later Outcome
Attorney General Merrick Garland’s November 2021 investiture remarks recognized Strauss’s service before Williams took over. The Maxwell trial began later that month, after the leadership transition. Strauss’s contribution belongs to the earlier prosecution and preparation period; the trial team and the succeeding U.S. Attorney have their own documented roles.
Williams’s December 29, 2021 statement announced the verdict and credited the survivors who testified. The jury convicted Maxwell on five of six tried counts. The June 28, 2022 sentencing announcement records a twenty-year prison term, five years of supervised release and a $750,000 fine. Nathan imposed the sentence; prosecutors did not determine it themselves. The later 2026 opinion’s procedural history confirms that the perjury counts were dismissed at the government’s request at sentencing. Maxwell was not convicted by a jury on those separate counts.
The Second Circuit affirmed the judgment on September 17, 2024. Its opinion rejected Maxwell’s argument that the Florida nonprosecution agreement bound SDNY. The Supreme Court’s October 6, 2025 journal records denial of certiorari in No. 24-1073. Denial of review is not a separate Supreme Court opinion endorsing every part of the lower court’s reasoning.
Judge Paul A. Engelmayer’s August 25, 2026 opinion denied Maxwell’s later petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. These later proceedings update the case’s outcome; they do not establish that Strauss personally handled them. The existence or status of any further appeal from the 2026 order is not determined here.
Evidence Appearances
| Record | Date and locator | What it documents | What it does not establish |
|---|---|---|---|
| EFTA00044963 | August 13, 2019 planning emails; PDF pages 237 and 283; individual stamps EFTA00045199 and EFTA00045245 | Strauss named in a proposed MCC visit | Her observations, a completed inspection report or a finding of misconduct |
| EFTA00010990 | July 2, 2020 charging announcement; PDF | Her public prosecutorial role at Maxwell’s arrest | A new accusation against Strauss or a contemporaneous verdict against Maxwell |
| EFTA00023791 | July 2020 email chain; PDF pages 1 through 4 | Andrew’s lawyers’ complaint, SDNY’s confidentiality proposal and a subsequent acknowledgment | A completed interview, acceptance of every term or Strauss’s authorship of redacted messages |
| EFTA00028680 | November 12, 2020; one-page letter | OPR transmitted its Florida investigation report to Strauss for possible litigation relevance | That Strauss or SDNY was an OPR subject or made the original Florida deal |
| Document 27 | July 21, 2020; DOJ-OGR-00001635 through DOJ-OGR-00001641 | Maxwell’s defense challenged public statements | A judicial finding that Strauss violated a rule |
| Document 28 | July 23, 2020; one-page order | Nathan denied the gag application without prejudice and warned counsel | An unconditional approval of future comments |
| DOJ-OGR-00005456 | Document 382, October 29, 2021; readable court-document text, PDF page 42, stamp DOJ-OGR-00005497 | Defense relied on Strauss’s earlier public remarks in its evidentiary argument | Admission of those remarks at trial or acceptance of the defense theory |
The viewer links identify archive entries; readable document reproductions are provided separately because a viewer shell may not expose page text. Document dates describe the underlying records, not the date on which a later archive released or indexed them. This is a selected evidence map, not a claim to have examined every occurrence of Strauss’s name.
Chronology
| Date | Event | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| February 5, 2018 | Strauss returned to SDNY as Senior Counsel | Predates the 2019 Epstein charges |
| March 22, 2019 | Deputy appointment announced for Khuzami’s April departure | Establishes the succession plan |
| July 2019 | Epstein prosecuted while Berman led SDNY | Strauss was deputy, not office head |
| August 13, 2019 | MCC visit planning named Strauss | Official investigative context after Epstein’s death |
| June 20, 2020 | Strauss became Acting U.S. Attorney | Leadership transferred from Berman |
| July 2, 2020 | Maxwell arrest and charging announcement | Strauss’s principal public role in the case |
| July 13 through 16, 2020 | Andrew interview confidentiality exchange | Complaint, proposal and acknowledgment are distinct steps |
| July 21 and 23, 2020 | Gag application and denial without prejudice | Defense objection followed by a judicial decision |
| November 12, 2020 | OPR sent its report to Strauss | Florida review supplied for New York litigation |
| January 16, 2021 | Court appointment took effect | Strauss continued as U.S. Attorney |
| March 29, 2021 | Expanded Maxwell indictment filed | Added trafficking allegations |
| October 2021 | Williams succeeded Strauss | Trial responsibility falls in the next leadership tenure |
| December 29, 2021 | Maxwell convicted on five tried counts | Jury findings after Strauss’s departure |
| January 2022 | Strauss’s return to Fried Frank announced | Return to private practice |
| June 28, 2022 | Maxwell sentenced | Twenty-year term imposed by the court |
| August 25, 2026 | Section 2255 petition denied | Later collateral proceeding, not a Strauss-era action |
Later Professional Work
The January 31, 2022 announcement reported by Bloomberg Law described Strauss’s return to Fried Frank as senior counsel. The firm supplied Chambers profile continues to identify her with its White Collar Defense, Regulatory Enforcement & Investigations practice. SIFMA likewise lists her as senior counsel in litigation.
Those current professional listings are the basis for describing her later role as of the check date. Her work as defense counsel after leaving government does not itself establish representation of an Epstein participant or a conflict in the Maxwell case. Any such claim would require its own client and case records.
Related Articles
- Jeffrey Epstein
- Ghislaine Maxwell
- Prince Andrew and the sexual misconduct allegations
- The 2007 nonprosecution agreement
Source List
- DOJ appointment announcement, February 5, 2018, and deputy appointment announcement, March 22, 2019.
- Barr’s June 19, 2020 announcement, Berman’s June 19 response and June 20 departure statement.
- DOJ Maxwell charging release, July 2, 2020, and official case chronology.
- Maxwell detention submission, Document 4, defense publicity application, Document 27 and court order, Document 28.
- Second superseding indictment, Document 187, August 2021 opinion, Document 317 and October 2021 defense filing, Document 382.
- MCC email compilation, Andrew interview correspondence and OPR transmittal letter.
- OPR executive summary, concerning the Florida investigation and resolution.
- Strauss court appointment statement, and January 2021 leadership appointments.
- Williams investiture remarks, verdict statement and sentencing release.
- Second Circuit opinion, September 17, 2024, Supreme Court journal and August 25, 2026 collateral-review opinion.
- Chambers professional profile, SIFMA biography and January 2022 return announcement reporting.
- Epstein-Data’s Strauss research page, used to locate released records, with substantive claims checked against the underlying documents.