Raniere’s new lawyer
NXIVM leader adds former Epstein attorney, Marc Fernich, to his legal team.
Keith Raniere now has more than just sexual predation as a common thread with the late Jeffrey Epstein.
But he also no longer boasts the same lawyer who just won a reversal for Bill Cosby at the highest court in Pennsylvania.
The imprisoned NXIVM leader and convicted sex trafficker just added one of Epstein’s former attorneys, Marc Fernich, to wage his appeal — in addition to another attorney who, along with Fernich, has represented Sinaloa drug cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera.
Fernich, whose former client Epstein was found dead in his jail cell of what was ruled a suicide on Aug. 10, 2019, joined the legal team for Raniere on Friday, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn.
“Personal autonomy and individual choice, however unorthodox, are essential values,” Fernich told Law Beat. “To the extent Keith’s prosecution infringed those values, I hope to help vindicate them. Government shouldn’t be in the business of policing morality.”
Raniere, 60, the reputed cult leader known as “Vanguard” who commanded NXIVM and its Executive Success Programs (ESP) for two decades based in Colonie, is serving 120 years in an Arizona federal prison. A federal jury in 2019 convicted Raniere, formerly of Halfmoon, of sex trafficking, forced labor conspiracy, fraud and racketeering charges that included underlying acts of possessing child pornography and exploitation, extortion and identity theft.
Fernich joined Team Raniere after another high-profile attorney, Jeffrey H. Lichtman and two of his firm members, Jason Goldman and Jeffrey Benson Einhorn, were added to the appeal earlier in the week.
Together, the lawyers have represented a who’s who list of high-profile defendants. Both
represented “El Chapo,” who was convicted of all charges in the same courthouse as Raniere and is serving life in prison; and John A. “Junior” Gotti, the son of the late Gambino crime family boss of the same name. Gotti Jr., who was convicted in 1999 of racketeering, was tried repeatedly in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on charges he engineered a plot to shoot Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa inside a taxi for remarks Sliwa made on his radio show. The juries all deadlocked, leading to mistrials.
Fernich’s former clients include shoe businessman Steve Madden, who was convicted of stock fraud, and ex-state Senate leader Malcolm Smith, who was convicted of trying to bribe his way onto the ticket in the 2013 New York City mayoral race.
Lichtman has represented clients including the rapper Fat Joe, who was convicted of tax evasion, and a New York City television reporter accused of slapping a chauffeur, a case that ended in an acquittal.
“I was contacted by Mr. Raniere regarding significant new facts which call into serious question some of the most prejudicial evidence entered against him at the trial,” Lichtman told Law Beat. “After an initial review I agreed to enter my appearance for Keith and advance a motion for a new trial.
“While I appreciate that Keith is not the most popular defendant, everyone accused of a crime deserves justice and a fair trial, regardless of who they are and what they’ve been charged with, Keith Raniere and his co-defendants included. And that’s all we will be asking for here.” Lichtman said Raniere’s legal team will no longer include Albany lawyer Paul Derohannesian, who was one of Raniere’s trial lawyers; or Jennifer Bonjean, who just won Cosby’s reversal on a sex crime conviction from the top court in Pennsylvania; or the firm of Steven A. Metcalf II.
Derohannesion told Law Beat he was still listed as an attorney for Raniere.
In addition to his personal growth company, Raniere secretly led Dominus Obsequious Sororium (DOS), a clan that demanded members take lifetime vows of obedience in a supposedly all-female empowerment sorority. Women quickly learned they were “slaves” to “masters,” including Raniere, the “supreme master.” Women in DOS were deprived of food and sleep, forced to continue to hand over blackmail material called “collateral,” in several cases branded with Raniere’s initials on their pelvic areas and, in several other cases, ordered to seduce Raniere.
On Wednesday, former DOS member Jessica Joan likened Raniere to Epstein at the sentencing of former high-ranking NXIVM member Allison Mack, a first-line master in DOS who ordered several women to seduce Raniere.
“She was the Ghislaine Maxwell to Keith Raniere’s Jeffrey Epstein,” Joan told Senior U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis. Maxwell is the woman accused of providing teenage girls to Epstein, a financier and convicted sex offender.
The judge sentenced Mack to three years in prison, showing leniency in large part because of the defendant’s cooperation with prosecutors.
And more leniency could be in store for Lauren Salzman, a former high-ranking member of NXIVM and first-line DOS master who will be sentenced July 28 by Garaufis.
Salzman, who pleaded guilty to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy, played a role in one of Raniere’s most egregious acts: the confinement of a Mexican woman in NXIVM to a room in her family’s Halfmoon townhouse for nearly two years, all because she dared to kiss another man.
But Salzman, the daughter of former NXIVM president Nancy Salzman, was a star witness for prosecutors, providing details about NXIVM, DOS and Raniere’s physical and emotional abuse of women.
Salzman’s mother could also receive major leniency based on her level of cooperation. Her sentencing date and the sentencing date for NXIVM bookkeeper Kathy Russell, who pleaded guilty to visa fraud, are unscheduled.