House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and three fellow Republican lawmakers sent a letter Thursday asking the Department of Justice to investigate sexual abuse allegations raised by Sarah Kellen, a former longtime assistant to Jeffrey Epstein, during her closed-door interview with the committee last month. Kellen named celebrity hairstylist Frédéric Fekkai and Philip Levine, a wealthy businessman and former mayor of Miami Beach, as men she says sexually abused her in the early 2000s.
Both men denied the allegations through representatives. But the committee isn't waiting for them to come around. Comer's letter asks DOJ to "use all available tools, including immunity for certain witnesses, to investigate the allegations against, and any other criminal conduct committed by, Philip Levine and Frédéric Fekkai."
The letter also poses a question the federal government has never adequately answered: why was Kellen never interviewed by law enforcement until Epstein's arrest in July 2019, more than a decade after she was named as a potential co-conspirator in Epstein's infamous 2007 non-prosecution agreement? That question sits at the center of a broader failure that allowed Epstein's operation to run for years while the people closest to it were either ignored or quietly shielded.
Kellen, now 47, appeared voluntarily before the Oversight Committee on May 21, accompanied by two attorneys. A transcript of her interview was made public Thursday. She told lawmakers that Epstein sexually abused her for over a decade and disclosed for the first time that Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's convicted accomplice, also participated in her abuse on at least one occasion.
Then she went further. She named Fekkai and Levine.
Kellen told the panel that Fekkai, now 68, abused her before she ever began working for Epstein. In the early 2000s, while she was pursuing modeling opportunities, Fekkai invited her to a fashion show in Hawaii. When she arrived, there was no show.
"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 was in her early 20s at the time. She told lawmakers that Fekkai later introduced her to Epstein, describing him as a model scout for Victoria's Secret.
A spokesperson for Fekkai, Mark Herr, denied the allegations in a statement to ABC News: "Mr. Fekkai was astonished to read of Ms. Kellen's testimony. Mr. Fekkai never abused anyone. He never participated in any illegal behavior. He knew nothing about Epstein's repugnant depravity or trafficking. He did nothing wrong."
The allegation involving Levine, Kellen said, took place during a summer trip to France around 2003. Levine was a houseguest at a property Epstein and Maxwell had rented in Saint-Tropez. After Epstein and Maxwell had gone to sleep, Kellen claimed Levine approached her.
"He came up to me, and he was like, 'You know, must be so lonely for you, working with them, because you're with them all the time, and you can't have your own life, so you must be really lonely,' and he basically forced himself on me."
She said it happened again during a walk on the beach when Levine "grabbed my hand and pulled me" into a wooden shack.
A spokesperson for Levine, 64, issued a statement to ABC News: "Nearly a quarter century ago, our client had a brief intimate encounter with another consenting adult. Any allegation suggesting otherwise is not true." Levine has previously told the Miami Herald that he "never had a friendship or business relationship" with Epstein.
Kellen told the committee she did not know whether Epstein or Maxwell were aware of either alleged incident. She did not report them at the time and said she had not considered legal action against Levine.
The broader picture Kellen painted was one of total control. She told lawmakers she began working for Epstein and Maxwell around 2001 after being approached about the job by a co-worker at a hotel in Hawaii. She said she had no idea it was Epstein until she arrived at his private island.
From there, she said, Epstein dictated everything, her clothing, her haircut, her hair color, where she lived. He had a code phrase, she told the committee: "cold sheets." It meant she was to come to his residence and sleep with him. He called her his "human hot water bottle."
"I was being paid, in part, to be raped."
The assaults occurred on average once a week, she said. Even during his Florida jail sentence, Epstein made a video call from inside the Palm Beach County Stockade and ordered her to undress on camera.
Maxwell, Kellen told lawmakers, participated in her abuse on one occasion on Epstein's island. "And I just remember her touching me and showing me how to touch Jeffrey and what he liked," Kellen said. Maxwell also exerted constant psychological pressure, Kellen alleged, calling her a "slave" and "minion."
"She just fed him and catered to every whim that he wanted. I always felt like she turned him into the monster that he became."
Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence at a federal prison camp in Texas.
One of the most damning threads in Kellen's testimony concerns the 2007 non-prosecution agreement, the deal that allowed Epstein to avoid federal charges for alleged sexual crimes involving dozens of underage girls. Kellen was one of four women named as potential co-conspirators in that agreement. She told the committee she did not even know her name was in it until the document became public years later.
"The Federal Government of the United States branded me a criminal in a secret deal with my own abuser, without ever once speaking to me. I have spent every year since trying to live underneath that piece of paper."
That fact alone should trouble anyone who believes in basic due process. Federal prosecutors named Kellen as a co-conspirator in a secret agreement with the man she says was raping her weekly, and never once picked up the phone. Court documents and records released earlier this year by the Justice Department indicate that her own allegations of persistent abuse were part of the reason she was never charged.
So the government knew she claimed to be a victim. And still never interviewed her until 2019.
The scope of Kellen's appearance was limited by advance agreement with the committee. On advice of counsel, she largely declined to answer questions about other alleged victims and about Epstein's scheme to recruit underage girls for massages, the core activity that led to his criminal charges.
Attorney Kimberly Hamm explained the boundaries: "She's not going to answer questions about other victims and questions specific to massages in Palm Beach [that] could implicate other victims," citing privacy concerns and Kellen's constitutional rights.
Kellen told lawmakers she would be "a hundred percent" willing to answer more questions if given immunity by Congress or the Justice Department. That offer now sits with DOJ alongside Comer's letter.
Before the interview, Comer acknowledged that committee members were divided on how to view Kellen. "There are some that believe she was 100% a victim or survivor, and then there are some that think she was a victim and victimizer. So, it's just a terrible scenario," he said. Afterward, his assessment was clearer. He called Kellen "a victim" and described her appearance as "the most substantive, productive interview that we've had."
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the committee's top Democrat, used his time to press Kellen about Epstein's previous relationship with President Donald Trump. Trump had a friendship with Epstein until a falling out around 2004 and has repeatedly denied any knowledge of Epstein's crimes.
Kellen said she recalled Epstein "using the gym a lot" at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate during her early years of employment and assumed the two were friends based on photographs Epstein displayed in his homes. She said she met Trump once, during a brief encounter at Mar-a-Lago in 2001 or 2002.
"Jeffrey introduced me to him. That was my only encounter with him during my employment."
Garcia's line of questioning produced nothing beyond what was already publicly known. The committee's stated purpose, examining the federal government's handling of Epstein investigations, was better served by the rest of the interview.
The ball is now with the Justice Department. Comer's letter asks for an investigation into Fekkai and Levine, an explanation of why Kellen was never interviewed before 2019, and a willingness to extend immunity so she can answer more questions. Both accused men have denied wrongdoing. Kellen's allegations are serious but unproven. The committee has done its part by putting them on the record and referring them to prosecutors.
The deeper question is institutional. How did a woman named in a federal co-conspirator agreement, a woman the government's own records suggest was herself a victim, go more than a decade without a single law enforcement interview? That isn't a gap in the system. It's the system working exactly as Epstein's deal was designed to make it work: quietly, in the dark, with no one asking the people who might have had the most to say.
The Epstein case has always been less about one man's depravity than about how many people and institutions looked the other way. If DOJ ignores this referral the way it ignored Sarah Kellen for twelve years, the pattern will speak for itself.
