Billionaire Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein Goes Free

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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 22, 2019 6:36 pm

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Prince Andrew stepped down as an official government trade envoy in 2011 following criticism about his former association with a US convicted sex offender, the billionaire Jeffrey Epstein


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Prince Andrew tried to broker crown property deal for Kazakh oligarch

Duke of York’s office urged crown estate to sell London house to tycoon who bought Andrew’s house for £3m over asking price
Robert Booth
Sun 3 Jul 2016 10.58 EDT


Prince Andrew at a commemoration service in Manchester for the Battle of the Somme centenary.

Prince Andrew acted as a broker for a Kazakh oligarch who wanted to buy a London home from the Queen’s estate, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed.

The Duke of York’s office tried to secure a crown estate property near Kensington Palace for the oil and gas tycoon Timur Kulibayev at the same time as his marital home of Sunninghill Park was being sold to the billionaire for £3m over the asking price.

The duke was a government trade envoy at the time of the attempted deal for Kulibayev, son-in-law of the Kazakh president, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Its emergence is likely to fuel calls for further investigation into his dealings with the autocratic regime.


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According to the emails released to the Mail on Sunday, the Duke of York’s private secretary, Amanda Thirsk, urged the crown estate to sell one of its valuable Kensington properties to Kulibayev, saying: “They are happy to spend very large numbers to get the right property.”

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Thirsk wrote to Philip Everett, a crown estate official at Windsor Great Park: “They [the buyers] are desperate to buy/lease a property in Kensington and are aware of the houses owned by crown estate near to KP [Kensington Palace].”

The email, sent on 12 July 2007, added: “He asked if it would be possible to sit down with you and discuss what might be becoming available in the coming years … All in all, I agree with him that the three of us should have a meeting in September to review all of the above. Would 11 September work for you? We could come down to Windsor.”

Thirsk also asked about a deal for two pieces of land next to Sunninghill and said they wanted to “work with crown estate on some joint development projects”. Everett responded that the Duke of York should contact the crown estate’s London office for information about property in Kensington. But he also hinted the duke’s office should cease its intermediary role on Sunninghill saying: “I think I should now deal direct with the incoming purchasers on any detail relating to the site.”

The crown estate said that no deal on any London properties went through as a result of the intervention, but Tim Farron, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said the duke’s role was “unacceptable” and “looks very fishy”.

“The prince’s office needs to come clean on what happened,” he said. “His office should not be lobbying in this way. While we have a housing crisis we should be helping London families in need to get a home to call their own and not just helping rich business contacts.”

Two months later, the £15m sale of the Duke of York’s Berkshire mansion to Kulibayev was finalised.

“We’re not aware of any transaction taking place in London connected with this email,” said a spokesperson for the crown estate, which owns £12bn worth of property on behalf of the sovereign. “In any event, all our transactions are carried out in fully commercial terms in line with our statutory remit.”

The Labour MP Chris Bryant said: “It’s quite wrong for a member of the royal family to act as some kind of estate agent for Kazakh billionaires who are trying to buy up crown estate property in London, which seems to be what’s happening here. The only person who can clear this up is Prince Andrew himself and it’s about time he did so.”

Buckingham Palace said the sale of Sunninghill Park “was a straight commercial transaction between the trust which owned the house and the trust which bought it”.

It said: “There were no side deals and absolutely no arrangement from the Duke of York to benefit otherwise or to commit to any other commercial arrangement.”

Prince Andrew stepped down as an official government trade envoy in 2011 following criticism about his former association with a US convicted sex offender, the billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... are_btn_tw
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby Grizzly » Sat Feb 23, 2019 10:29 pm

:shock2:

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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Feb 23, 2019 11:58 pm

does trump's labor secretary Acosta still have a job?


I mean he broke the law.....didn't care about the children Epstein raped

why wouldn't trump fire him?
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby Grizzly » Sun Feb 24, 2019 12:29 am

I think we both know the answer to that, slad.
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 27, 2019 9:32 am

Betsy Woodruff



A tipster spotted Sec. Alexander Acosta (currently embroiled in the Epstein disaster) having dinner last night w Justice Alito at Central by Main Justice
https://twitter.com/woodruffbets/status ... 1663648768
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Mar 02, 2019 12:02 am

POLITICS


House Democrats want Jeffrey Epstein sex case reopened

BY JULIE K. BROWN

MARCH 01, 2019 07:29 PM,

UPDATED 3 HOURS AGO

Duration 5:41Where are they now? The biggest players in the Jeffrey Epstein case

The girls who were abused by Jeffrey Epstein and the cops who championed their cause remain angry over what they regard as a gross injustice, while Epstein's employees and those who engineered his non-prosecution agreement have prospered.
By Marta Oliver Craviotto | Emily Michot | Julie K. Brown
Fourteen Democratic members of Congress have asked the U.S. attorney general to reopen the criminal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the 66-year-old Palm Beach hedge fund manager accused of sexually trafficking underage girls.

The group, led by Florida Democrats Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Lois Frankel, and Jackie Speier of California, asked President Donald Trump’s new attorney general, William Barr, to reopen the controversial non-prosecution agreement under which Epstein and a group of unidentified co-conspirators received federal immunity for sex trafficking crimes.

The deal, negotiated by then-Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta — who is now President Donald Trump’s labor secretary — allowed Epstein to plead guilty in state court to two felony prostitution charges. He served 13 months in the Palm Beach County jail, but had his private driver pick him up at the jail six days a week to go to his downtown office in West Palm Beach as part of an unusual work-release arrangement.


Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused underage girls in this home in Palm Beach.
Emily Michot emichot@MiamiHerald.com
Last week, a federal judge ruled that the 2008 deal, which was sealed, was illegal because it violated Epstein’s victims’ rights.

As pressure has grown on Acosta to resign, Republican lawmakers, including Florida Sen. Rick Scott, have called for a review of the case. In February, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility began a probe into whether Acosta and other prosecutors committed any misconduct.

“We urge the DOJ to reopen the non-prosecution agreement to allow for a thorough investigation of these heinous crimes,’’ the Democratic lawmakers wrote in the letter to Barr.

They also asked the Justice Department to release its investigation, presumably upon its completion.

The case has drawn fresh scrutiny following the publication of a series of Miami Herald stories, “Perversion of Justice,’’ that analyzed thousands of documents in the case. Those documents, as well as new interviews with his victims and the police, revealed how Acosta and other prosecutors worked in concert with Epstein’s high-powered lawyers to curtail the criminal investigation in order to cut a secret plea bargain.

alexander-acosta-ap071010029016-cropped.jpg
United States Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta has faced harsh scrutiny since a series of articles in the Miami Herald examined the non-prosecution agreement he arranged with serial sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein while U.S. attorney for Southern Florida.
Alan Diaz AP
The victims were not told about the deal until well after Epstein was sentenced. By keeping it secret, prosecutors prevented Epstein’s victims, mostly 13- to 16-year-olds, from appearing at his sentencing and appealing to the judge to throw out the deal. Records also showed that prosecutors misled the sentencing judge into believing there were only a few victims, when in fact, by the time he was sentenced, authorities had identified nearly three dozen victims.

Acosta, once a rising star in the Republican Party, has not commented publicly since his 2017 confirmation hearing for his Cabinet post. At that time, he told lawmakers that, given the weight of the evidence, the best option was to resolve the case with a non-prosecution agreement so that Epstein would at least serve some time behind bars on the state charges and be forced to register as a sex offender.

Epstein’s attorney, Martin Weinberg, has not responded to multiple phone messages and emails left by the Miami Herald. He was released from jail in 2009 and now divides his time between his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach and his private island in the Caribbean.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politi ... rylink=cpy
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby liminalOyster » Sat Mar 02, 2019 1:17 pm

Alan Dershowitz suggests curbing press access to hearing on Jeffrey Epstein sex abuse
BY JULIE K. BROWN

MARCH 01, 2019 05:09 PM,
UPDATED MARCH 01, 2019 11:07 PM

A court hearing on whether to unseal sensitive documents involving the alleged sex trafficking of underage girls by Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein — and the possible involvement of his influential friends — will play out in a New York City courtroom next week.

But it may happen behind closed doors, with the news media and public barred — at least in part.

An attorney for lawyer Alan Dershowitz wrote a letter to the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Tuesday, asking whether the media should be excluded from the proceeding because his oral arguments on behalf of his client could contain sensitive information that has been under seal.

The appeals court had not responded to his concern as of Friday, but if the hearing is closed during his lawyer’s argument, it would represent the latest in a long history of successful efforts to keep details of Epstein’s sex crimes sealed.

Dershowitz, a professor emeritus at Harvard, constitutional law expert and criminal defense attorney, represented Epstein, who in 2008 received what many consider an unusually light sentence for sexually abusing dozens of girls at his Palm Beach mansion. Two women — one of whom was underage — have said Epstein and his partner, British socialite and environmentalist Ghislaine Maxwell, directed them to have sex with Dershowitz, 80, and other wealthy, powerful men. Dershowitz and Maxwell have denied the claims.

Oral arguments are scheduled Wednesday to hear an appeal by the Miami Herald and other parties seeking to unseal a 2015 court case involving Epstein and Maxwell. The Herald, as part of an ongoing investigation into Epstein’s case, hopes to shed more light on the scope of Epstein’s crimes, who was involved and whether there was any undue influence that tainted the criminal justice process.

A legal brief supporting the Herald’s appeal was filed in December by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 32 other media companies, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Dow Jones, Fox News, Gannett, Politico, Reveal Center for Investigative Reporting and Tribune Publishing Co.

The case — which was settled in 2017 — involved Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who sued Maxwell in federal court in the Southern District of New York in 2015. Giuffre had asserted that Maxwell and Epstein trafficked her and other underage girls, often at sex parties that Epstein hosted at his homes in New York, New Mexico, Palm Beach and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Maxwell called her a liar. Giuffre sued for defamation.

The girls who were abused by Jeffrey Epstein and the cops who championed their cause remain angry over what they regard as a gross injustice, while Epstein's employees and those who engineered his non-prosecution agreement have prospered.

As the case was litigated, the judge allowed a vast trove of documents, including testimony by witnesses, to be sealed. Dershowitz, having been publicly implicated in Epstein’s crimes by Giuffre, tried unsuccessfully to get the judge to unseal a select number of documents that he says will exonerate him. Blogger Michael Cernovich also filed a motion to release a portion of the sealed documents.

The judge denied their motions in 2016, as the case was still ongoing, saying release of the documents could taint a potential jury pool.

After the case was settled, the Herald filed a more extensive motion, arguing that with the case now closed, all the documents should be made public. The motion, filed in April 2018, came as the Herald was working on an investigative series, Perversion of Justice, which detailed how Epstein and his lawyers manipulated federal prosecutors to obtain one of the most lenient sentences for a child sex offender in history.

Dershowitz’s lawyer, Andrew G. Celli Jr., emphasized to the Herald that Dershowitz is not trying to ban the media from the proceeding; he is simply giving the court a heads up that his arguments could include information that has never been made public because it’s under seal.

“What the letter says very clearly is we intend to make reference to the sealed material in open court, so we want to notify the judges that this is my intention to make my arguments,’’ Celli said. “We want the courtroom to be open so long as we can argue the substance of what we want to unseal.’’

Virginia Roberts was working at Mar-a-Lago when she was recruited to be a masseuse to Palm Beach hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein. She was lured into a life of depravity and sexual abuse.


Barbara Petersen, executive director of the First Amendment Foundation, pointed out that since the judges are well aware that sealed documents are at the heart of the appeal, Dershowitz’s request comes across more as a “veiled threat.”

“It’s like ‘if you don’t keep out the media, then we are going to reveal stuff and let the chips fall where they may,’ ’’ she said. “They don’t want it to come out and they don’t want to make a motion and ban the media, so they are hoping the judges do it for them.”

Attorneys for Giuffre also want the case unsealed.

“Ms. Giuffre is a victim of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking organization,’’ her attorney, Paul Cassell, said in a statement attached to the Herald’s appeal. “When she bravely came forward to explain what happened to her at the hands of Epstein and his powerful friends, Epstein’s ‘Madame’ and girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, told the world that Ms. Giuffre was a liar. Ms. Giuffre filed a defamation action.’’

The case was settled in Giuffre’s favor, with Maxwell paying Giuffre millions.

Maxwell wants the case to remain sealed and earlier tried to get the judge to destroy the sealed documents, but her motion was denied earlier this week.

Epstein’s deal, brokered by then-Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, allowed Epstein to plead guilty to two prostitution charges in state court, and in exchange, Epstein and an untold number of others were given federal immunity. Epstein served just 13 months in the county jail, although much of his incarceration was served at his office in downtown West Palm Beach on “work release.”

Last week, a federal judge ruled that Acosta, now President Donald Trump’s secretary of labor, violated the law because he and other prosecutors deliberately kept the deal secret from Epstein’s victims, who are now in their late 20s and early 30s.

Cernovich’s lawyer, Marc J. Randazza, said he has never seen a court seal nearly an entire court record like this.

“I’ve seen partial seals, but I’ve never seen anything where it went quite that far. That in of itself is newsworthy,’’ he said. “What kind of power here is able to influence our court system in such a big way? Something is amiss and I’m glad that journalists are out there looking at it.”

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/ ... 22729.html
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby RocketMan » Sat Mar 02, 2019 4:19 pm

Alan Dershowitz is truly a repugnant person.

I would like to watch A Reversal of Fortune again because Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close are remarkable in it if memory serves, but unfortunately it stars right wing nutjob Ron Silver (RIP) portraying this scuzzball as a paragon of justice and truth...
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby RocketMan » Sun Mar 03, 2019 10:05 am

Man, I gotta say Miami Herald is doing excellent work with this case. Very comprehensive & thorough. They're clearly not going to let this go. Unless someone has the leverage to REALLY threaten the publisher.
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Mar 04, 2019 12:16 pm

Sarah Kendzior


Second woman claims billionaire Jeffrey Epstein 'directed' her to have sex with Alan Dershowitz

Second woman claims billionaire perv Jeffrey Epstein 'directed' her to have sex with Alan Dershowitz

Stephen Rex Brown
Second woman claims billionaire perv Jeffrey Epstein 'directed' her to have sex with Alan Dershowitz
Alan Dershowitz (pictured) denies allegations of a second alleged trafficking victim of Jeffrey Epstein. (John Lamparski / Getty Images for Hulu)
A second alleged trafficking victim of Jeffrey Epstein says the billionaire pedophile "directed" her to have sex with Alan Dershowitz — a claim the prominent attorney adamantly denies.

The revelation regarding Sarah Ransome's allegations against the 80-year-old lawyer who represented the notorious sex offender is included in a public transcript available in Manhattan Federal Court.

Ransome has sued Epstein and his alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, saying they trafficked her for sex from 2006 to 2007, while she was in her 20s.

During a Nov. 7 hearing on Ransome's case, Maxwell's attorney Laura Menninger mentioned the explosive allegation against Dershowitz.

"(Ransome) has alleged not only that my client ran a sex trafficking organization but she claims also that she was directed by my client and the Epstein defendants to have sex with third parties, including Alan Dershowitz, for example," Menninger said.

Ransome alleges in her suit that even as Epstein used an army of powerful attorneys — including Dershowitz — to fight a sex trafficking investigation in Florida, he continued "transporting young females" in New York.

Dershowitz furiously denied he'd ever met Ransome, who now lives in Barcelona, and said that "none of this happened." He slammed her as mentally unstable and said she'd bizarrely claimed to be in possession of a video of President Trump engaging in pedophilia and sex tapes of both Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Ransome is unwell and being manipulated by her high-powered attorney David Boies, Dershowitz said.

"The villain here is David Boies, who is exploiting a crazy woman in order to get revenge against me," Dershowitz said.

Dershowitz, a noted Harvard Law professor, said Boies is furious about bar charges Dershowitz filed against him. Details of the charges were unavailable and neither side would go into detail. Dershowitz added that he eagerly awaited an opportunity to sue Ransome for defamation.

"Alan Dershowitz's absurd attacks on me are consistent with his pattern of attacking every lawyer who has represented women who have accused him of sexual abuse," Boies said.

"This is simply a pattern where he thinks if he is loud enough and crazy enough it will distract attention from what he's done."

Virginia Roberts was the first alleged Epstein victim to claim that he directed her to have sex with Dershowitz. Dershowitz insists he also has never met Roberts, who now lives in Australia.

Roberts alleged that Maxwell recruited her for Epstein in 1998, when she was 15 years old and working a summer job at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. Roberts sued Maxwell for defamation, claiming the media heiress smeared her by denying the disturbing sex scheme.

They settled the case last year. Dershowitz is now seeking to have documents in the case, which he says would clear his name, unsealed.

The Epstein case has received new scrutiny following a Miami Herald investigation that revived questions about the legal slap on the wrist the billionaire received from then-Southern Florida U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta.

In a new letter filed in Manhattan Federal Court, Dershowitz's attorney writes that the law professor has been the victim of "selective leaking" intended to smear his good name.

"Once again, Mr. Dershowitz – who has conscientiously and expeditiously pressed, through the judicial process, for disclosure of all documents in the case – has been the victim of one-sided and selective leaking of materials," attorney Andrew Celli wrote.

Dershowitz – who recently lamented he'd become persona non grata on Martha's Vineyard for his support of Trump – says that Roberts is the likely leaker.

She alleged in 2014 that Epstein "trafficked" her to Dershowitz and Prince Andrew for sex – a claim that has since been stricken from the record.

"The allegation is utterly false and defamatory: Mr. Dershowitz has never even met Ms. Roberts . . . records prove that Mr. Dershowitz could not have abused Ms. Roberts because he was not present in the places where she claims such abuse occurred," Celli wrote.

Prince Andrew also denied the allegation. Roberts settled her claims against Epstein in 2015.

The Herald's investigation highlighted the unusually cozy relationship between Epstein's legal team and Acosta, who gave the sex offender a generous plea deal. Epstein only served 13 months in a private wing of the Palm Beach County jail despite ample evidence he'd orchestrated an international sex trafficking operation, the Herald reported.

Jeffrey Epstein (second from left) in custody in Florida in 2008

Epstein, a hedge fund manager with a mansion on the Upper East Side and a private Caribbean island, was once friends with the likes of Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey and Woody Allen, among other celebs and business titans.

"I've known Jeff for 15 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," Trump said of Epstein in 2002.

The new scrutiny of the Epstein case prompted Dershowitz to tell Axios that the billionaire had once let him and his family stay at his Palm Beach home.

"He lent us his house once. And I was there, my grandchildren were there, my daughter was there, and we all got massages," Dershowitz told the site.

"It was therapeutic. I had a therapeutic massage with an old old Russian. . . . Believe me, if I had known that anything improper had ever taken place in that house, I never would have allowed my children, my grandchildren, my wife, my daughter-in-law, my son, to have spent time there."

Stephen Rex Brown is a reporter covering New York City courts for the New York Daily News.
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html


Thread on Epstein and TrumpSarah Kendzior added,


On the new @gaslitnation, 34 minutes in, we discuss the Epstein case, the allegations of child rape against Trump, Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell and her father Robert's relationship to the Mossad, and their connections to the Russian mafia


"Donald Trump is friends with at least five pedophiles, most of whom were involved in sex trafficking or blackmail schemes. There's Epstein, Casablancas, Arif, Nader, Cohn. Who the hell is friends with five pedophiles?!"


"Donald Trump is famously insular. This is a guy with no real friends; his only best friend was Roy Cohn. But Trump manages to rack up this level of engagement with known sex traffickers and pedophiles?! That's enormously disturbing."



"Donald Trump is friends with at least five pedophiles, most of whom were involved in sex trafficking or blackmail schemes. There's Epstein, Casablancas, Arif, Nader, Cohn. Who the hell is friends with five pedophiles?!"



The coverage of convicted pedophile sex trafficker Epstein from the 2000s/early 2010s is so disgusting. It's either glib reporting that excuses him or shows NYC high society condoning him -- even bringing their children along https://www.thedailybeast.com/katie-cou ... lose-ranks

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NY Magazine is a main purveyor of Jeffrey Epstein puff pieces and they openly admit their coverage was guided by NYC PR sleaze Howard Rubenstein -- the same guy who did Trump and Kushner family PR http://nymag.com/news/features/41826/

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There is something disgusting at the heart of NYC politics and media that lets serial rapists and criminals get cover -- and be socially accepted -- for so long. Dershowitz's summer vacations get more press than his corruption or alleged child rape. It's an insular, sick world.

They hire accused rapists and sexual assaulters as pundits or journalists. They bury stories of assault. Weinstein, Allen, Epstein are feted for years while operatives like Rubenstein or Michael Cohen use threats and bribes to silence victims. A moral void, a corrupt culture.


This is how NYT covered pedophile sex trafficker and rapist Jeffrey Epstein in 2008: gushing over his wealth and connections and pitying him for going to prison. Ignores corruption in favor of quirks.

This is a sick paper, a sick culture. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/busi ... wanted=all

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https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/statu ... 6559360001
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 06, 2019 9:11 am

Miami federal prosecutors recuse themselves from Jeffrey Epstein victims' rights case


From article... “The victims’ attorneys — Edwards, Scarola and Paul Cassell — have asked the Justice Department to throw out Epstein’s plea agreement and reopen the criminal investigation.”

Barr moved jurisdiction to Georgia.

So the Federal Prosecutor in Atlanta now owns this case.
And he was appointed by Trump in 2017? WTFF?


Miami U.S. Attorney’s Office recuses itself from Jeffrey Epstein case

Julie K. Brown
Just days before a Friday deadline, the Justice Department has reassigned the Jeffrey Epstein victims’ rights case to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta, the attorneys representing Epstein’s victims said Tuesday.

Miami federal prosecutors, in a letter to attorneys for the victims on Monday, said they had recused themselves from the case, according to Bradley Edwards and Jack Scarola, representing Epstein’s victims.

The reassignment means that the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, Byung J. “BJay” Pak, will oversee the case for the government. Pak, a former Georgia lawmaker, was appointed Atlanta’s chief federal prosecutor by President Donald Trump in October 2017.

The Justice Department is still under a Friday deadline for prosecutors to confer with the victims’ attorneys in an effort to settle the case. On Feb. 22, U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra in Palm Beach County ruled that federal prosecutors, under former Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, broke the law when they concealed a plea agreement from more than 30 underage girls in Palm Beach who had been sexually abused by Epstein, a multimillionaire New York hedge fund manager.

Marra stopped short of voiding the agreement, which granted Epstein and an untold number of accomplices immunity from federal prosecution for sex trafficking crimes, provided Epstein plead guilty to minor charges in state court. At the time of the plea deal, federal prosecutors had gathered enough evidence against Epstein to write a 53-page federal indictment, court records show.


The story behind a Palm Beach sex offender’s remarkable deal

Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein is a free man, despite sexually abusing dozens of underage girls according to police and prosecutors. His victims have never had a voice, until now.

An investigation by the Miami Herald, “Perversion of Justice,’’ found that after Acosta met privately with one of Epstein’s lawyers, the government agreed to seal the plea agreement so that no one — not the victims, not even the state court judge who sentenced Epstein — would know the full extent of his crimes. Epstein, now 66, was allowed to plead guilty to prostitution charges and served 13 months in the Palm Beach County jail, where he was given liberal work release, and allowed to travel to New York and his private island in the Caribbean during his subsequent house arrest. He was released in 2009, and now divides his time between New York, Palm Beach and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The Herald interviewed four of Epstein’s victims, who were as young as 13 at the time they were abused by Epstein. They said they felt betrayed by state and federal prosecutors, who treated them like prostitutes instead of victims. Two of them sued the federal government in 2008 under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, which grants crime victims the right to be informed about plea deals and to confer with prosecutors.

Marra, in a 33-page opinion, said prosecutors not only intentionally violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, but they misled the girls into believing that the FBI’s sex trafficking case against Epstein was ongoing — when, in fact, prosecutors had secretly closed it after sealing the plea bargain from the public record.

Marra, noting that he reviewed affidavits, depositions and interrogatories, said “Epstein worked in concert with others to obtain minors not only for his own sexual gratification, but also for the sexual gratification of others.’’

The victims’ attorneys — Edwards, Scarola and Paul Cassell — have asked the Justice Department to throw out Epstein’s plea agreement and reopen the criminal investigation.

Edwards, who brought the victims’ rights case against the government, said transferring the case to another jurisdiction is a prudent decision.

“I think it’s good that we’re going to get fresh eyes and a fresh opinion on the way the case was handled,’’ Edwards said Tuesday. “We were obviously in an adversarial posture with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami because they handled the case to begin with.’’

Miami’s new U.S. Attorney, Ariana Fajardo Orshan — who was appointed by President Trump in September — did not respond to a request for comment.


Jeffrey Epstein apologizes, but not to his victims

Jeffrey Epstein, a multimillionaire who molested dozens of underage girls, and is suspected of trafficking countless other girls around the world, issued a public apology Tuesday. It was not to the victims of his abuse, but to one of their lawyers.



Edwards predicted that it would take some time for Pak’s office to review the case, which includes more than 500 docket entries and thousands of documents. He said if the sides can’t agree on a resolution, then Marra would likely have to come up with one. The case is being closely watched by crime victims’ rights advocates, as it will likely set a precedent.

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Byung Jin ‘BJay’ Pak. the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, will inherit the existing Epstein case from Miami’s U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Acosta, who was appointed by Trump as the U.S. secretary of labor in 2017, is the focus of a separate Justice Department investigation into whether there was any prosecutorial misconduct in the Epstein case. That probe, by the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility, was initiated in response to demands from a bipartisan group in Congress, led by Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida.

In the meantime, a court hearing will be held at 4 p.m. Wednesday in New York in another Epstein-related case. A federal appeals court will hear oral arguments in a motion by the Miami Herald, supported by 32 other news organizations, asking the court to unseal documents that could reveal details about the extent of Epstein’s crimes and any other people who may have been involved.

Three of Epstein’s former attorneys — who helped negotiate his plea deal in 2008 — wrote a letter published in The New York Times on Monday defending the plea bargain cut with Acosta as a fair deal. The letter was in response to a Times editorial that called on Congress and the Trump administration to hold Acosta and others involved in the case accountable.

Epstein’s lawyers said the editorial’s conclusions were “in profound conflict with the reality,’’ noting that there was no evidence that Epstein committed federal sex trafficking offenses. The letter was signed by former Epstein lawyers Kenneth Starr, Jack Goldberger and Lilly Ann Sanchez, as well as Epstein’s current attorney, Martin G. Weinberg.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politi ... 36459.html


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How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime

Julie K. Brown
Nov. 28, 2018 | En español



The story behind a Palm Beach sex offender’s remarkable deal

Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein is a free man, despite sexually abusing dozens of underage girls according to police and prosecutors. His victims have never had a voice, until now.

How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime

Perversion of Justice logo
A decade before #MeToo, a multimillionaire sex offender from Florida got the ultimate break.

On a muggy October morning in 2007, Miami’s top federal prosecutor, Alexander Acosta, had a breakfast appointment with a former colleague, Washington, D.C., attorney Jay Lefkowitz.

It was an unusual meeting for the then-38-year-old prosecutor, a rising Republican star who had served in several White House posts before being named U.S. attorney in Miami by President George W. Bush.

Instead of meeting at the prosecutor’s Miami headquarters, the two men — both with professional roots in the prestigious Washington law firm of Kirkland & Ellis — convened at the Marriott in West Palm Beach, about 70 miles away. For Lefkowitz, 44, a U.S. special envoy to North Korea and corporate lawyer, the meeting was critical.

His client, Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, 54, was accused of assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls — with the help of young female recruiters — to as often as three times a day, the Town of Palm Beach police found.

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Jeffrey Epstein’s waterfront Palm Beach home on El Brillo Way. in addition to his Palm Beach home, Epstein owns a residence in New York City and on a private island in the U.S. Islands. Epstein has been accused of molesting hundreds of young girls in his homes.

Emily Michot emichot@miamiherald.com

The eccentric hedge fund manager, whose , was also suspected of trafficking minor girls, often from overseas, for sex parties at his other homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and the Caribbean, FBI and court records show.

Facing a 53-page federal indictment, Epstein could have ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life.

But on the morning of the breakfast meeting, a deal was struck — an extraordinary plea agreement that .

Not only would Epstein serve just 13 months in the county jail, but the deal — called a non-prosecution agreement — essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes, according to a Miami Herald examination of .

The pact required Epstein to plead guilty to two prostitution charges in state court. Epstein and four of his accomplices named in the agreement received immunity from all federal criminal charges. But even more unusual, the deal included wording that granted immunity to “any potential co-conspirators’’ who were also involved in Epstein’s crimes. These accomplices or participants were not identified in the agreement, leaving it open to interpretation whether it possibly referred to other influential people who were having sex with underage girls at Epstein’s various homes or on his plane.

As part of the arrangement, Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that . As a result, the non-prosecution agreement was sealed until after it was approved by the judge, thereby averting any chance that the girls — or anyone else — might show up in court and try to derail it.

This is the story of how Epstein, bolstered by unlimited funds and represented by a powerhouse legal team, was able to manipulate the criminal justice system, and how his accusers, still traumatized by their pasts, believe they were betrayed by the very prosecutors who pledged to protect them.

“I don’t think anyone has been told the truth about what Jeffrey Epstein did,’’ said one of Epstein’s victims, Michelle Licata, now 30. “He ruined my life and a lot of girls’ lives. People need to know what he did and why he wasn’t prosecuted so it never happens again.”

Now President Trump’s secretary of labor, Acosta, 49, oversees a massive federal agency that provides oversight of the country’s labor laws, including human trafficking. Until he was reported to be eliminated on Thursday, a day after this story posted online, Acosta also had been included on lists of possible replacements for former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who resigned under pressure earlier this month.

Acosta did not respond to numerous requests for an interview or answer queries through email.

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Alex Acosta was the U.S. attorney for Southern Florida when he negotiated an end to the federal investigation of Jeffrey Epstein.

Florida International University

But court records reveal details of the negotiations and the role that Acosta would play in arranging the deal, which scuttled the federal probe into a possible international sex trafficking operation. Among other things, Acosta allowed Epstein’s lawyers unusual freedoms in dictating the terms of the non-prosecution agreement.

“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.

Not a ‘he said, she said’

“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.

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Courtney Wild, 30, was a victim of serial sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein beginning at the age of 14. Epstein paid Wild, and many other underage girls, to give him massages, often having them undress and perform sexual acts. Epstein also used the girls as recruiters, paying them to bring him other underage girls.

Emily Michot emichot@miamiherald.com

Over the past year, 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.

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The Miami Herald obtained thousands of FBI and court records, lawsuits, and witness depositions, and went to federal court in New York to access sealed documents in the reporting of "Perversion of Justice." The Herald also tracked down more than 60 women who said they were victims, some of whom had never spoken of the abuse before.

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As part of Epstein’s agreement, he was required to register as a sex offender, and pay restitution to the three dozen victims identified by the FBI. 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.

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Jena Lisa Jones spends time with her 18-month-old son Raymond. Jones says that she is a victim of sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein. Jones says she was just 14 when she was introduced to Epstein and was paid $200 by him to give him a massage at his home. Jones says Epstein told her to take off all of her clothes and that he fondled her during the massage. Epstein pleaded guilty to a single state charge of soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14. Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He served 13 months at the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office Stockade Facility, much of the time outside of the gates on ‘work release.’

Emily Michot emichot@miamiherald.com

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.


How a teen runaway became one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims

Virginia Roberts was working at Mar-a-Lago when she was recruited to be a masseuse to Palm Beach hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein. She was lured into a life of depravity and sexual abuse.

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.

‘Avoid the press’ plan

That included keeping the deal from Epstein’s victims, emails show.

“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.

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Attorney Brad Edwards is representing several young women who were sexually abused as minors by Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. Edwards Ft. Lauderdale law office is packed with files for the Epstein case.

Emily Michot emichot@miamiherald.com

“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.

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Jeffrey Epstein, accused of being a serial abuser of underage women, grins for his mugshot. He once compared his alleged crimes to ‘stealing a bagel.’
Florida sex offender registry
The sheriff, Ric Bradshaw, would not answer questions, submitted by the Miami Herald, about Epstein’s work release.

Neither Epstein nor his lead attorney, Jack Goldberger, responded to multiple requests for comment for this story. 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 house on El Brillo

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.

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Former Palm Beach County Police Detective Joe Recarey was the lead detective on the solicitation-of-minors case against billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.

Emily Michot emichot@miamiherald.com

“The common interview with a girl went like this: ‘I was brought there by so and so. I didn’t feel comfortable with what happened, but I got paid well, so I was told if I didn’t feel comfortable, I could bring someone else and still get paid,’ ’’ Recarey said.

During the massage sessions, Recarey said Epstein would molest the girls, paying them premiums for engaging in oral sex and intercourse, and offering them a further bounty to find him more girls.

Recarey, in his first interview about the case, said the evidence the department collected to support the girls’ stories was overwhelming, including phone call records, copies of written phone messages from the girls found in Epstein’s trash and Epstein’s flight logs, which showed his private plane in Palm Beach on the days the girls were scheduled to give him massages.

Epstein could be a generous benefactor, Recarey said, buying his favored girls gifts. He might rent a car for a young girl to make it more convenient for her to stop by and cater to him. Once, he sent a bucket of roses to the local high school after one of his girls starred in a stage production. The floral-delivery instructions and a report card for one of the girls were discovered in a search of his mansion and trash. Police also obtained receipts for the rental cars and gifts, Recarey said.

Epstein counseled the girls about their schooling, and told them he would help them get into college, modeling school, fashion design or acting. At least two of Epstein’s victims told police that they were in love with him, according to the police report.

The police report shows how uncannily consistent the girls’ stories were — right down to their detailed descriptions of Epstein’s genitalia.

“We had victims who didn’t know each other, never met each other and they all basically independently told the same story,’’ said Reiter, the retired Palm Beach police chief.

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Michael Reiter is the former Chief of Police in Palm Beach. Reiter was Chief during the investigation of Palm Beach resident Jeffrey Epstein.

Emily Michot emichot@miamiherald.com

Reiter, also speaking for the first time, said detectives were astonished by the sheer volume of young girls coming and going from his house, the frequency — sometimes several in the same day — and the young ages of the girls.

“It started out to give a man a back rub, but in many cases it turned into something far worse than that, elevated to a serious crime, in some cases sexual batteries,’’ he said.

Most of the girls said they arrived by car or taxi, and entered the side door, where they were led into a kitchen by a female staff assistant named Sarah Kellen, the report said. A chef might prepare them a meal or offer them cereal. The girls — most from local schools — would then ascend a staircase off the kitchen, up to a large master bedroom and bath.

They were met by Epstein, clad in a towel. He would select a lotion from an array lined up on a table, then lie facedown on a massage table, instruct the girl to strip partially or fully, and direct them to massage his feet and backside. Then he would turn over and have them massage his chest, often instructing them to pinch his nipples, while he masturbated, according to the police report.

At times, if emboldened, he would try to penetrate them with his fingers or use a vibrator on them. He would go as far as the girls were willing to let him, including intercourse, according to police documents. Sometimes he would instruct a young woman he described as his Yugoslavian sex slave, Nadia Marcinkova, who was over 18, to join in, the girls told Recarey. Epstein often took photographs of the girls having sex and displayed them around the house, the detective said.

Once sexually gratified, Epstein would take a shower in his massive bathroom, which the girls described as having a large shower and a hot pink and mint green sofa.

Kellen (now Vickers) and Marcinkova, through their attorneys, declined to comment for this story.

Never enough

One girl told police that she was approached by an Epstein recruiter when she was 16, and was working at the Wellington mall. Over the course of more than a year, she went to Epstein’s house hundreds of times, she said. The girl tearfully told Recarey that she often had sex with Marcinkova — who employed strap-on dildos and other toys — while Epstein watched and choreographed her moves to please himself, according to the police report. Often times, she said, she was so sore after the encounters that she could barely walk, the police report said.

But she said she was firm about not wanting to have intercourse with Epstein. One day, however, the girl said that Epstein, unable to control himself, held her down on a massage table and penetrated her, the police report said. The girl, who was 16 or 17 at the time, said that Epstein apologized and paid her $1,000, the police report said.

Most of the girls came from disadvantaged families, single-parent homes or foster care. Some had experienced troubles that belied their ages: They had parents and friends who committed suicide; mothers abused by husbands and boyfriends; fathers who molested and beat them. One girl had watched her stepfather strangle her 8-year-old stepbrother, according to court records obtained by the Herald.

Many of the girls were one step away from homelessness.

“We were stupid, poor children,’’ said one woman, who did not want to be named because she never told anyone about Epstein. At the time, she said, she was 14 and a high school freshman.

“We just wanted money for school clothes, for shoes. I remember wearing shoes too tight for three years in a row. We had no family and no guidance, and we were told that we were going to just have to sit in a room topless and he was going to just look at us. It sounded so simple, and was going to be easy money for just sitting there.”


Where are they now? The biggest players in the Jeffrey Epstein case

The girls who were abused by Jeffrey Epstein and the cops who championed their cause remain angry over what they regard as a gross injustice, while Epstein's employees and those who engineered his non-prosecution agreement have prospered.

The woman, who went to Epstein’s home multiple times, said Epstein didn’t like her because her breasts were too big. The last time she went, she said, one girl came out crying and they were instructed to leave the house and had to pay for their own cab home.

Some girls told police they were coached by their peer recruiters to lie to Epstein about their ages and say they were 18. Epstein’s legal team would later claim that even if the girls were under 18, there was no way he could have known. However, under Florida law, ignorance of a sex partner’s age is not a defense for having sex with a minor.

Wild said he was well aware of their tender ages — because he demanded they be young.

“He told me he wanted them as young as I could find them,’’ she said, explaining that as she grew older and had less access to young girls, Epstein got increasingly angry with her inability to find him the young girls he desired.

“If I had a girl to bring him at breakfast, lunch and dinner, then that’s how many times I would go a day. He wanted as many girls as I could get him. It was never enough.’’

The pyramid crumbles

Epstein’s scheme first began to unravel in March 2005, when the parents of a 14-year-old girl told Palm Beach police that she had been molested by Epstein at his mansion. The girl reluctantly confessed that she had been brought there by two other girls, and those girls pointed to two more girls who had been there.

By the time detectives tracked down one victim, there were two and three more to find. Soon there were dozens.

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Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane, which is painted a distinctive shade of blue, is parked at Palm Beach International Airport Thursday morning, May 24, 2018. The plane landed at the airport Wednesday May 23, 2018.

Emily Michot emichot@miamiherald.com

“We didn’t know where the victims would ever end,” Reiter said.

Eventually, the girls told them about still other girls and young women they had seen at Epstein’s house, many of whom didn’t speak English, Recarey said. That led Recarey to suspect that Epstein’s exploits weren’t just confined to Palm Beach. Police obtained the flight logs for his private plane, and found female names and initials among the list of people who flew on the aircraft — including the names of some famous and powerful people who had also been passengers, Recarey said.

A newly released FBI report shows that at the time the non-prosecution deal was executed, the agency was interviewing witnesses and victims “from across the United States.” The probe stretched from Florida to New York and New Mexico, records show. The report was released by the FBI in response to a lawsuit filed by Radar Online and was made available on the bureau’s website after the Miami Herald and other news organizations submitted requests, said Daniel Novack, the lawyer who filed the Freedom of Information Act case pro bono.

One lawsuit, still pending in New York, alleges that Epstein used an international modeling agency to recruit girls as young as 13 from Europe, Ecuador and Brazil. The girls lived in a New York building owned by Epstein, who paid for their visas, according to the sworn statement of Maritza Vasquez, the one-time bookkeeper for Mc2, the modeling agency.

Mike Fisten, a former Miami-Dade police sergeant who was also a homicide investigator and a member of the FBI Organized Crime Task Force, said the FBI had enough evidence to put Epstein away for a long time but was overruled by Acosta. Some of the agents involved in the case were disappointed by Acosta’s bowing to pressure from Epstein’s lawyers, he said.

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Mike Fisten is a private investigator for victims’ attorneys in the sexual abuse cases against Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.

Emily Michot emichot@miamiherald.com

“The day that a sitting U.S. attorney is afraid of a lawyer or afraid of a defendant is a very sad day in this country,’’ said Fisten, now a private investigator for Edwards.

Suit/countersuit

Now, a complex web of litigation could reveal more about Epstein’s crimes. A lawsuit, set for trial Dec. 4 in Palm Beach County, involves the notorious convicted Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein, in whose law firm Edwards once worked.

In 2009, Epstein sued Edwards, alleging that Edwards was involved with Rothstein and was using the girls’ civil lawsuits to perpetuate Rothstein’s massive Ponzi operation. But Rothstein said Edwards didn’t know about the scheme, and Epstein dropped the lawsuit.

Edwards countersued for malicious prosecution, arguing that Epstein sued him to retaliate for his aggressive representation of Epstein’s victims.

Several women who went to Epstein’s home as underage girls are scheduled to testify against him for the first time.

Florida state Sen. Lauren Book, a child sex abuse survivor who has lobbied for tough sex offender laws, said Epstein’s case should serve as a tipping point for criminal cases involving sex crimes against children.

“Where is the righteous indignation for these women? Where are the protectors? Who is banging down the doors of the secretary of labor, or the judge or the sheriff’s office in Palm Beach County, demanding justice and demanding the right to be heard?’’ Book asked.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Villafaña, in court papers, said that prosecutors used their “best efforts’’ to comply with the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, but exercised their “prosecutorial discretion’’ when they chose not to notify the victims. The reasoning went like this: The non-prosecution deal had a restitution clause that provided the girls a chance to seek compensation from Epstein. Had the deal fallen through, necessitating a trial, Epstein’s lawyers might have used the prior restitution clause to undermine the girls’ credibility as witnesses, by claiming they had exaggerated Epstein’s behavior in hopes of cashing in.

Acosta has never fully explained why he felt it was in the best interests of the underage girls — and their parents — for him to keep the agreement sealed. Or why the FBI investigation was closed even as, recently released documents show, the case was yielding more victims and evidence of a possible sex-trafficking conspiracy beyond Palm Beach.

Upon his nomination by Trump as labor secretary in 2017, Acosta was questioned about the Epstein case during a Senate confirmation hearing.

“At the end of the day, based on the evidence, professionals within a prosecutor’s office decided that a plea that guarantees someone goes to jail, that guarantees he register [as a sex offender] generally and guarantees other outcomes, is a good thing,’’ Acosta said of his decision to not prosecute Epstein federally.

California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in opposing Acosta for labor secretary, noted that “his handling of a case involving sex trafficking of underage girls when he was a U.S. attorney suggests he won’t put the interests of workers and everyday people ahead of the powerful and well-connected.’’

Marci Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania law professor who is one of the nation’s leading advocates for reforming laws involving sex crimes against children, said what Acosta and other prosecutors did is similar to what the Catholic Church did to protect pedophile priests.

“The real crime with the Catholic priests was the way they covered it up and shielded the priests,’’ Hamilton said. “The orchestration of power by men only is protected as long as everybody agrees to keep it secret. This is a story the world needs to hear.’’

This article has been updated to acknowledge Radar Online’s role in securing the release of FBI documents on Jeffrey Epstein and to eliminate a reference to Courtney Wild’s age when she stopped recruiting for Epstein. Wild now says she is not sure how old she was, but her lawyer says she would have been younger than 21, the age she had stated in an interview.

Support investigative journalism

The Miami Herald obtained thousands of FBI and court records, lawsuits, and witness depositions, and went to federal court in New York to access sealed documents in the reporting of "Perversion of Justice." The Herald also tracked down more than 60 women who said they were victims, some of whom had never spoken of the abuse before.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... 97825.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby RocketMan » Wed Mar 06, 2019 9:30 am

So to recap, SLAD: Why do you believe you must include in most of your posts not only several ENTIRE ARTICLES, but also lots of large photographs? It really does make reading these threads unnecessarily difficult. Why can you not make any accommodations?
-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 06, 2019 9:45 am

Belligerent Savant
Elvis posted 3 pics on page 2 .....i guess that you didn't think that was a problem but 4 is way too much for you
Wombaticus Rex
semper occultus
cptmarginal
backtoiam
American Dream
stillrobertpaulsen
Rory
Grizzly
have all posted pics in this thread.....I think I understand your objection :roll:
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
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Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby RocketMan » Wed Mar 06, 2019 9:49 am

seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 06, 2019 4:45 pm wrote:Belligerent Savant
Elvis
Wombaticus Rex
semper occultus
cptmarginal
backtoiam
American Dream
stillrobertpaulsen
Rory
Grizzly
have all posted pics in this thread.....I think I understand your objection :roll:


Don't deflect, I was talking about you CONSTANTLY posting ENTIRE long ass articles ALONG WITH large photographs across threads, making threads nigh unreadable and a chore to scroll through.

If you absolutely WANT to do so, at least say it openly. We all have our kinks.
Last edited by RocketMan on Wed Mar 06, 2019 9:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 06, 2019 9:50 am

I was not deflecting I was stating the truth ...your problem is not with pics it is who is posting them...you didn't complain about Elvis's pics
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

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