“The damage that happened in this case is unconscionable,” said Bradley Edwards, a former state prosecutor who represents some of Epstein’s victims. “How in the world, do you, the U.S. attorney, engage in a negotiation with a criminal defendant, basically allowing that criminal defendant to write up the agreement?”
As a result, neither the victims — nor even the judge — would know how many girls Epstein allegedly sexually abused between 2001 and 2005, when his underage sex activities were first uncovered by police. Police referred the case to the FBI a year later, when they began to suspect that their investigation was being undermined by the Palm Beach State Attorney’s Office.
“This was not a ‘he said, she said’ situation. This was 50-something ‘shes’ and one ‘he’ — and the ‘shes’ all basically told the same story,’’ said retired Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter, who supervised the police probe. More than a decade later, at a time when Olympic gymnasts and Hollywood actresses have become a catalyst for a cultural reckoning about sexual abuse, Epstein’s victims have all but been forgotten. The women — now in their late 20s and early 30s — are still fighting for an elusive justice that even the passage of time has not made right.
Like other victims of sexual abuse, they believe they’ve been silenced by a criminal justice system that stubbornly fails to hold Epstein and other wealthy and powerful men accountable. “Jeffrey preyed on girls who were in a bad way, girls who were basically homeless. He went after girls who he thought no one would listen to and he was right,’’ said Courtney Wild, who was 14 when she met Epstein. (MiamiHerald)
The Miami Herald examined a decade’s worth of court documents, lawsuits, witness depositions and newly released FBI documents. Key people involved in the investigation — most of whom have never spoken before — were also interviewed. The Herald also obtained new records, including the full unredacted copy of the Palm Beach police investigation and witness statements that had been kept under seal.
The Herald learned that, as part of the plea deal, Epstein provided what the government called “valuable consideration” for unspecified information he supplied to federal investigators. While the documents obtained by the Herald don’t detail what the information was, Epstein’s sex crime case happened just as the country’s subprime mortgage market collapsed, ushering in the 2008 global financial crisis.
Records show that Epstein was a key federal witness in the criminal prosecution of two prominent executives with Bear Stearns, the global investment brokerage that failed in 2008, who were accused of corporate securities fraud. Epstein was one of the largest investors in the hedge fund managed by the executives, who were later acquitted. It is not known what role, if any, the case played in Epstein’s plea negotiations.
The Herald also identified about 80 women who say they were molested or otherwise sexually abused by Epstein from 2001 to 2006. About 60 of them were located — now scattered around the country and abroad. Eight of them agreed to be interviewed, on or off the record. Four of them were willing to speak on video.
The women are now mothers, wives, nurses, bartenders, Realtors, hairdressers and teachers. One is a Hollywood actress. Several have grappled with trauma, depression and addiction. Some have served time in prison.
A few did not survive. One young woman was found dead last year in a rundown motel in West Palm Beach. She overdosed on heroin and left behind a young son.
In many cases, the confidential financial settlements came only after Epstein’s attorneys exposed every dark corner of their lives in a scorched-earth effort to portray the girls as gold diggers.
“You beat yourself up mentally and physically,’’ said Jena-Lisa Jones, 30, who said Epstein molested her when she was 14. “You can’t ever stop your thoughts. A word can trigger something. For me, it is the word ‘pure’ because he called me ‘pure’ in that room and then I remember what he did to me in that room.’’
Now, more than a decade later, two unrelated civil lawsuits — one set for trial on Dec. 4 — could reveal more about Epstein’s crimes. The Dec. 4 case, in Palm Beach County state court, involves Epstein and Edwards, whom Epstein had accused of legal misdeeds in representing several victims. The case is noteworthy because it will mark the first time that Epstein’s victims will have their day in court, and several of them are scheduled to testify.
A second lawsuit, known as the federal Crime Victims’ Rights suit, is still pending in South Florida after a decade of legal jousting. It seeks to invalidate the non-prosecution agreement in hopes of sending Epstein to federal prison. Wild, who has never spoken publicly until now, is Jane Doe No. 1 in “Jane Doe No. 1 and Jane Doe No. 2 vs. the United States of America,” a federal lawsuit that alleges Epstein’s federal non-prosecution agreement was illegal.
Federal prosecutors, including Acosta, not only broke the law, the women contend in court documents, but they conspired with Epstein and his lawyers to circumvent public scrutiny and deceive his victims in violation of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act. The law assigns victims a series of rights, including the right of notice of any court proceedings and the opportunity to appear at sentencing.
“As soon as that deal was signed, they silenced my voice and the voices of all of Jeffrey Epstein’s other victims,’’ said Wild, now 31. “This case is about justice, not just for us, but for other victims who aren’t Olympic stars or Hollywood stars.’’
In court papers, federal prosecutors have argued that they did not violate the Crime Victims’ Rights Act because no federal charges were ever filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, an argument that was later dismissed by the judge.
Despite substantial physical evidence and multiple witnesses backing up the girls’ stories, the secret deal allowed Epstein to enter guilty pleas to two felony prostitution charges. Epstein admitted to committing only one offense against one underage girl, who was labeled a prostitute, even though she was 14, which is well under the age of consent — 18 in Florida.
“She was taken advantage of twice — first by Epstein, and then by the criminal justice system that labeled a 14-year-old girl as a prostitute,’’ said Spencer Kuvin, the lawyer who represented the girl.
“It’s just outrageous how they minimized his crimes and devalued his victims by calling them prostitutes,’’ said Yasmin Vafa, a human rights attorney and executive director of Rights4Girls, which is working to end the sexual exploitation of girls and young women.
“There is no such thing as a child prostitute. Under federal law, it’s called child sex trafficking — whether Epstein pimped them out to others or not. It’s still a commercial sex act — and he could have been jailed for the rest of his life under federal law,” she said.
It would be easy to dismiss the Epstein case as another example of how there are two systems of justice in America, one for the rich and one for the poor. But a thorough analysis of the case tells a far more troubling story.
A close look at the trove of letters and emails contained in court records provides a window into the plea negotiations, revealing an unusual level of collaboration between federal prosecutors and Epstein’s legal team that even government lawyers, in recent court documents, admitted was unorthodox.
Acosta, in 2011, would explain that he was unduly pressured by Epstein’s heavy-hitting lawyers — Lefkowitz, Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, Jack Goldberger, Roy Black, former U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis, Gerald Lefcourt, and Kenneth Starr, the former Whitewater special prosecutor who investigated Bill Clinton’s sexual liaisons with Monica Lewinsky.
Emails and documents obtained by the Herald suggest that the relationship between federal prosecutors and Epstein’s team was often more collaborative than adversarial:
It’s clear, from emails and other records, that prosecutors spent a lot of time figuring out a way to settle the case with the least amount of scandal. Instead of charging Epstein with a sex offense, prosecutors considered witness tampering and obstruction charges, and misdemeanors that would allow Epstein to secretly plead guilty in Miami, instead of in Palm Beach County, where most of the victims lived, thereby limiting media exposure and making it less likely for victims to appear at the sentencing.
…The email chain shows that prosecutors sometimes communicated with the defense team using private emails, and that their correspondence referenced discussions that they wanted to have by phone or in person, so that there would be no paper trail.
“It’s highly unusual and raises suspicions of something unethical happening when you see emails that say ‘call me, I don’t want to put this in writing.’ There’s no reason to worry about putting something in writing if there’s nothing improper or unethical in the case,’’ said former federal prosecutor Francey Hakes, who worked in the Justice Department’s crimes against children unit.
“Thank you for the commitment you made to me during our Oct. 12 meeting,’’ Lefkowitz wrote in a letter to Acosta after their breakfast meeting in West Palm Beach. He added that he was hopeful that Acosta would abide by a promise to keep the deal confidential.
“You … assured me that your office would not … contact any of the identified individuals, potential witnesses or potential civil claimants and the respective counsel in this matter,’’ Lefkowitz wrote.
In email after email, Acosta and the lead federal prosecutor, A. Marie Villafaña, acquiesced to Epstein’s legal team’s demands, which often focused on ways to limit the scandal by shutting out his victims and the media, including suggesting that the charges be filed in Miami, instead of Palm Beach, where Epstein’s victims lived.
“On an ‘avoid the press’ note … I can file the charge in district court in Miami which will hopefully cut the press coverage significantly. Do you want to check that out?’’ Villafaña wrote to Lefkowitz in a September 2007 email.
Federal prosecutors identified 36 underage victims, but none of those victims appeared at his sentencing on June 30, 2008, in state court in Palm Beach County. Most of them heard about it on the news — and even then they didn’t understand what had happened to the federal probe that they’d been assured was ongoing.
Edwards filed an emergency motion in federal court to block the non-prosecution agreement, but by the time the agreement was unsealed — over a year later — Epstein had already served his sentence and been released from jail.
Conspiracy theorists often fantasize about nefarious, elite cabals that sexually abuse and traffic children with impunity, because their secret, private power supersedes that of all national governments.
It is hard to examine the facts of the Epstein case and not wonder if those folks in the tin-foil hats aren’t onto something. Epstein had no shortage of powerful friends, including Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, and Alan Dershowitz — all of whom, at various points, frequented planes and properties that Epstein allegedly used for sexually abusing girls, sometimes with other men.
At least some of Epstein’s powerful friends appear to have been aware of his crimes. For example, the current president of the United States told New York Magazine in 2002, “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
One of Epstein’s alleged victims, Virginia Giuffre, has claimed in court papers that she was recruited into the billionaire’s child sex ring when she was 15 — and working as a towel girl at Mar-a-Lago. She also claims that Dershowitz and Prince Andrew participated in her sexual abuse. The star attorney and British royal have vigorously denied those allegations.
Still, the incomprehensible leniency of Epstein’s plea deal — and the extraordinary provision immunizing any unnamed co-conspirators who participated in his trafficking ring from federal charges — both invite the dark suspicion that federal prosecutors felt compelled to protect an individual, or individuals, who were even more powerful than Epstein.
The Herald floats an alternative explanation for the prosecutors’ behavior — but it’s less than satisfying:
The Herald learned that, as part of the plea deal, Epstein provided what the government called “valuable consideration” for unspecified information he supplied to federal investigators. While the documents obtained by the Herald don’t detail what the information was, Epstein’s sex crime case happened just as the country’s subprime mortgage market collapsed, ushering in the 2008 global financial crisis.
Records show that Epstein was a key federal witness in the criminal prosecution of two prominent executives with Bear Stearns, the global investment brokerage that failed in 2008, who were accused of corporate securities fraud. Epstein was one of the largest investors in the hedge fund managed by the executives, who were later acquitted. It is not known what role, if any, the case played in Epstein’s plea negotiations.
Generally speaking, American prosecutors do not take corporate securities fraud more seriously than serial child molestation and sex trafficking. But whatever the motivation behind Acosta’s decision, his acceptance of Epstein’s plea agreement surely disqualifies him from leading a federal agency responsible for combating sex trafficking.
Anyhow, this summary only scratches the surface of the Herald’s incredible investigation, which is worth reading in full. You should also check out New York Magazine’s contemporary reporting on the investigation into Epstein. Although, be advised: Reading about Jeffrey Epstein for longer than 45 minutes may lead one to conclude that 4-chan posts about “Pizzagate” paint a more accurate picture of the American ruling class than, say, all those uplifting speeches at John McCain’s funeral. (Intelligencer)
The pro-Israel billionaire that made Jeffrey Epstein
Epstein bragged about having several unnamed billionaire clients at the height of his success, however, Wexner was his only publicly known patron, leading to speculation that Wexner, who bought Epstein a lavish eight-story Manhattan mansion for $13 million, was bankrolling him.
Wexner, who became a client and mentor of Epstein’s in the late 1980s, facilitated Epstein’s entrance into elite American circles, as a 2003 Vanity Fair profile of Epstein reveals:
Since Leslie Wexner appeared in his life—Epstein has said this was in 1986; others say it was in 1989, at the earliest—he has gradually, in a way that has not generally made headlines, come to be accepted by the Establishment. He’s a member of various commissions and councils: he is on the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the New York Academy of Sciences and the Institute of International Education.
His current fan club extends to [Bear Stearns CEO James] Cayne, Henry Rosovsky, the former dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Larry Summers, Harvard’s current president.
Wexner and Epstein were so close that Epstein told Vanity Fair “it’s like we have one brain between two of us: each has a side.”
Wexner also shares Epstein’s love for Israel with generous financial support through his philanthropic arm, The Wexner Foundation, which Epstein once managed.
According to Vanity Fair:
Wexner trusts Epstein so completely that he has assigned him the power of fiduciary over all of his private trusts and foundations, says a source close to Wexner. In 1992, Epstein even persuaded Wexner to put him on the board of the Wexner Foundation in place of Wexner’s ailing mother. Bella Wexner recovered and demanded to be reinstated. Epstein has said they settled by splitting the foundation in two.
The Wexner Foundation is deeply involved in Israel advocacy mostly through its Israel Fellowship Program, which brings ten Israeli public officials to Harvard for a fully funded Master’s degree program in public administration at the Kennedy School of Government.
With the participation of The Wexner Foundation, Republican pollster and rightwing propaganda consultant Frank Luntz produced the “Wexner Analysis: Israeli Communications Priorities 2003,” a “road map” for linking the US’ so-called war on terror in Iraq to Israel’s war on Palestinians.
The foundation also funds a number of pro-Israel organizations, including Birthright Israel, a sectarian indoctrination program that sends young American Jews on a free ten-day trip to Israel to lure them into immigrating to bolster a Jewish majority and participate in the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians.
Wexner himself is a key supporter and sits on the board of governors of Hillel International, the national network of campus organizations devoted to policing criticism of Israel and attacking the increasingly popular boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement under the guise of “enriching the lives of Jewish students.” In 2008, Hillel awarded its annual Renaissance Award to Wexner for giving “critical support and counsel to Hillel.”
Though Wexner has reportedly replaced Epstein with a new money manager, he will always be the mentor who made Epstein the man he is today.
Fleeing to Israel
As the police investigation into Epstein’s underage sex trafficking ring intensified in 2006, Epstein reportedly told friends that the child molestation allegations were an anti-Semitic conspiracy, echoing a tactic commonly deployed by people like Dershowitz against critics of Israel.
It was no surprise, then, when celebrity publicist and Epstein confidante Peggy Siegal told Philip Weiss that Epstein’s two largest philanthropic causes were science and Israel.
Prior to taking a plea deal in 2008, it was rumored that Epstein was considering emigrating to Israel to avoid facing trial in Florida.
Israel’s openly discriminatory Law of Return—which affords citizenship rights to those Israel defines as Jews from anywhere in the world, while actively blocking indigenous Palestinians from returning to the lands from which they were expelled—has long served as an asset for criminals who qualify.
After the 1985 assassination of Palestinian American civil rights leader Alex Odeh allegedly by members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a group the FBI has defined as ”terrorist,” the suspects fled to the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba in the occupied West Bank, where they have remained in hiding.
Days after murdering, burning and dismembering a classmate in Maryland in 1997, Samuel Sheinbein, with help from his parents, emigrated to Israel to evade prosecution.
But in a supremely ironic twist, Epstein, the mega rich pro-Israel patron, decided he would rather face prosecution and possible jail time than live in a fortified Sparta-like state. In the end, it was a good bet: Epstein got off lightly.
Dershowitz himself has tried to rally support by claiming that he’s been targeted by his accusers because he’s Jewish and an advocate for Israel, a tactic that has generated strong pushback from at least one ardent supporter of Israel.
The Times of Israel plans to honor Dershowitz with its “Advocate for Israel Award” at a ritzy gala next month. Dershowitz will be recognized alongside Shimon Peres, professional American basketball player Omri Casspi, supermodel Bar Refaeli and billionaire owner of the New England Patriots Robert Kraft, to name just a few.
“The conspiracy between the government and Epstein was really ‘let’s figure out a way to make the whole thing go away as quietly as possible,’ ’’ said Edwards, who represents Wild and Jane Doe No. 2, who declined to comment for this story.
“In never consulting with the victims, and keeping it secret, it showed that someone with money can buy his way out of anything.’’
It was far from the last time Epstein would receive VIP handling. Unlike other convicted sex offenders, Epstein didn’t face the kind of rough justice that child sex offenders do in Florida state prisons. Instead of being sent to state prison, Epstein was housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County jail. And rather than having him sit in a cell most of the day, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office allowed Epstein work release privileges, which enabled him to leave the jail six days a week, for 12 hours a day, to go to a comfortable office that Epstein had set up in West Palm Beach. This was granted despite explicit sheriff’s department rules stating that sex offenders don’t qualify for work release.
The sheriff, Ric Bradshaw, would not answer questions, submitted by the Miami Herald, about Epstein’s work release.
During depositions taken as part of two dozen lawsuits filed against him by his victims, Epstein has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, in one instance doing so more than 200 times. In the past, his lawyers have said that the girls lied about their ages, that their stories were exaggerated or untrue and that they were unreliable witnesses prone to drug use.
In 2011, Epstein petitioned to have his sex offender status reduced in New York, where he has a home and is required to register every 90 days. In New York, he is classified as a level 3 offender — the highest safety risk because of his likelihood to re-offend.
A prosecutor under New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance argued on Epstein’s behalf, telling New York Supreme Court Judge Ruth Pickholtz that the Florida case never led to an indictment and that his underage victims failed to cooperate in the case. Pickholtz, however, denied the petition, expressing astonishment that a New York prosecutor would make such a request on behalf of a serial sex offender accused of molesting so many girls.
“I have to tell you, I’m a little overwhelmed because I have never seen a prosecutor’s office do anything like this. I have done so many [sex offender registration hearings] much less troubling than this one where the [prosecutor] would never make a downward argument like this,’’ she said.
The women who went to Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion as girls tend to divide their lives into two parts: life before Jeffrey and life after Jeffrey.
Before she met Epstein, Courtney Wild was captain of the cheerleading squad, first trumpet in the band and an A-student at Lake Worth Middle School.
After she met Epstein, she was a stripper, a drug addict and an inmate at Gadsden Correctional Institution in Florida’s Panhandle.
Wild still had braces on her teeth when she was introduced to him in 2002 at the age of 14.
She was fair, petite and slender, blonde and blue-eyed. Wild, who later helped recruit other girls, said Epstein preferred girls who were white, appeared prepubescent and those who were easy to manipulate into going further each time.
“By the time I was 16, I had probably brought him 70 to 80 girls who were all 14 and 15 years old. He was involved in my life for years,” said Wild, who was released from prison in October after serving three years on drug charges.
The girls — mostly 13 to 16 — were lured to his pink waterfront mansion by Wild and other girls, who went to malls, house parties and other places where girls congregated, and told recruits that they could earn $200 to $300 to give a man — Epstein — a massage, according to an unredacted copy of the Palm Beach police investigation obtained by the Herald.
The lead Palm Beach police detective on the case, Joseph Recarey, said Epstein’s operation worked like a sexual pyramid scheme.
https://youtu.be/92T6cVlXcyg?t=20m14s
Corbett Report Show Notes and Open Investigation on Pedophile Rings
TrafficKing is a non fiction account of the longest running human trafficking case in U.S. legal history that extends from Harvard University to The White House.
Compulsively readable, this non-fiction expose- part testimony, part thriller, tells an astonishing story of human trafficking which is exploding and thriving right under our noses, the perpetrators seemingly immune to either personal morality or the rules of our justice system. This book demands that we pay attention and makes it clear that it is our duty to speak up and demand an end to this form of modern slavery in which the powerful prey on the most vulnerable, underage teenagers.
The author explains the background of the primary focus of the crimes against young victims; Jeffrey Epstein, billionaire hedge-fund manager, celebrity and pedophile. Privileged, well-connected and a registered sex-offender. The book is gripping, disturbing and meticulously researched. Read it for the outrage and shock, and respond to it by contributing to a solution to the proliferation of trafficking through online pornography, kidnapping of children across international borders, and a corrupt system that often punishes with a slap on the hand while sidestepping the truth.
The shut-down of Omaha, Nebraska’s Franklin Community Federal Credit Union, raided by federal agencies in November 1988, sent shock waves all the way to Washington, D.C. $40 million was missing. The credit union’s manager: Republican Party activist Lawrence E. “Larry” King, Jr., behind whose rise to fame and riches stood powerful figures in Nebraska politics and business, and in the nation’s capital.
In the face of opposition from local and state law enforcement, from the FBI, and from the powerful Omaha World-Herald newspaper, a special Franklin committee of the Nebraska Legislature launched its own probe. What looked like a financial swindle, soon exploded into a hideous tale of drugs, Iran-Contra money-laundering, a nationwide child abuse ring, and ritual murder.
Nineteen months later, the legislative committee’s chief investigator died – suddenly, and violently, like more than a dozen other people linked to the Franklin case.
Author John DeCamp knows the Franklin scandal from the inside. In 1990, his “DeCamp memo” first publicly named the alleged high-ranking abusers. Today, he is attorney for two of the abuse victims.
Using documentation never before made public, DeCamp lays bare not only the crimes, but the cover-up – a textbook case of how dangerous the corruption of institutions of government, and the press, can be. In its sweep and in what it portends for the nation, the Franklin cover-up followed the ugly precedent of the Warren Commission.
