Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by RocketMan » Sat Jul 13, 2019 6:45 am
by seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 13, 2019 6:58 am
Dirk Schwenk
@DirkSchwenk
Jul 11
Epstein has ties to Chinese AI research
https://twitter.com/DirkSchwenk
Billionaire's New Mexico ranch linked to investigation
Jeffrey Epsteins Zorro Ranch in Stanley, N.M. is shown Monday, July 8, 2019. Epstein is entangled in two legal fights that span the East Coast, challenging his underage sexual abuse victims in a Florida court hours after he was indicted on sex traffThe Associated Press
Jeffrey Epstein's Zorro Ranch in Stanley, N.M. is shown Monday, July 8, 2019. Epstein is entangled in two legal fights that span the East Coast, challenging his underage sexual abuse victims in a Florida court hours after he was indicted on sex trafficking charges in a separate case in New York. (KRQE via AP)more +
At the center of Jeffrey Epstein's secluded New Mexico ranch sits a sprawling residence the financier built decades ago — complete with plans for a 4,000-square-foot (372-square-meter) courtyard, a living room roughly the size of the average American home and a nearby private airplane runway.
Known as the Zorro Ranch, the high-desert property is now tied to an investigation that the state attorney general's office says it has opened into Epstein with plans to forward findings to federal authorities in New York.
Epstein, who pleaded not guilty this week to federal sex trafficking charges in New York, has not faced criminal charges in New Mexico. But the scandal surrounding him has still sent a jolt through the rural Southwestern state as it comes under scrutiny for laws that allowed him to avoid registering as a sex offender following a guilty plea a decade ago in Florida.
"New Mexico continues to lag behind the rest of the country in strengthening outdated and weak laws that fail to protect our children from abuse," Balderas said in an emailed statement to The Associated Press. "This is a huge black eye for our state."
In addition to confirming his office had interviewed possible victims of Epstein who visited his ranch south of Santa Fe, Balderas' spokesman also said Friday that the attorney general would renew his push for legislation requiring anyone with a sex trafficking conviction to register as a sex offender in New Mexico.
In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to state charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution under an agreement that required him to spend 13 months in jail and register as a sex offender. The agreement has been widely criticized for secretly ending a federal sex abuse investigation involving at least 40 teenage girls at the time that could have landed him behind bars for life.
Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta said Friday he's stepping down amid the tumult over his handling of the 2008 deal with Epstein. Acosta was the U.S. attorney in Miami when he oversaw the non-prosecution agreement.
The indictment filed in New York this week accuses Epstein of paying girls hundreds of dollars in cash for massages and then molesting them at his homes in Palm Beach, Florida, and New York from 2002 through 2005. The charges carry the potential for up to 45 years in prison.
In New Mexico, the attorney general said he has been in touch with the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York. Balderas' office has not said, however, how many accusers his office has interviewed and he has not elaborated on what they say took place at the ranch.
In a 2015 court filing in Florida, a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Epstein said she had been abused at several locations, including the New Mexico property.
Records show Epstein purchased the ranch, valued by county officials at over $12 million, from the family of former Gov. Bruce King, who died 10 years ago. A 1995 Santa Fe New Mexican story about his plans to build a mansion on the property said the home would be 26,700 square feet (2,480 square meters) with a 2,100-square-foot (195-square-meter) living room.
Aerial images of the property show an airplane hangar and landing strip. Closer to the east edge of the property, several structures that appear to serve as small homes and stables stand in public view.
The King family still owns land surrounding much of Epstein's ranch near the town of Stanley, a rural outpost on the plains that stretch east of the Sandia Mountains.
Gary King, the son of the former governor, was the state attorney general from 2007 to 2015, and was among a handful of candidates in the state who returned Epstein campaign donations.
King had received $15,000 from Epstein in 2006 during his first-bid for attorney general, and then received $35,000 from firms linked to Epstein in 2014.
Former Gov. Bill Richardson donated $50,000 in 2006 gubernatorial campaign contributions from Epstein to charity.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/bil ... n-64309329
AG Balderas looking into possible sex crimes at Epstein’s New Mexico ranch
Jul 12, 2019 / 07:18 AM MDT
New Mexico
by: KRQE Media
Posted: Jul 12, 2019 / 06:28 AM MDT / Updated:
(KRQE)- State Attorney General Hector Balderas says he is now investigating possible crimes committed at billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s New Mexico mansion.
The Santa Fe New Mexican is reporting that Balderas’ office has been in contact with survivors of alleged sex crimes that Epstein is accused of and that they are now investigating to see if any of them happened at Epstein’s Santa Fe County mansion. According to a spokesman for Balderas, the office has contacted the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and will be providing additional evidence to federal authorities.
The New Mexican reports that a Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office spokesman has stated that the agency has not conducted any investigations of alleged sex crimes at the ranch.
Epstein was arraigned this week in federal court on sex crimes charges including sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors.
https://www.krqe.com/news/new-mexico/ag ... ico-ranch/
by DrEvil » Sat Jul 13, 2019 7:55 am
Grizzly » Sat Jul 13, 2019 9:45 am wrote:
....snip....
Slick Willy, on board Epstein's rape children, express...
by seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 13, 2019 10:32 am
Jeffrey Epstein: how US media – with one star exception – whitewashed the story
Ed Pilkington
Sat 13 Jul 2019 06.00 BST
The Miami Herald exposed a vast criminal network and a government cover-up – but why the silence elsewhere?
Epstein was arrested earlier this week on new sex trafficking charges. But why for so long did police appeals to the media fall on deaf ears?
Jeffrey Epstein was arrested earlier this week on new sex trafficking charges. But why for so long did police appeals to the media fall on deaf ears? Photograph: Jason Szenes/EPA
When Julie K Brown of the Miami Herald approached a former police chief of Palm Beach, Florida, in 2017, hoping to get him to open up about his investigation of the child sex crimes for which the wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein had been fleetingly jailed a decade earlier, she was surprised by how unresponsive he was.
Michael Reiter told Brown he had been down this road many times and was sick of it. As Brown recalled in a WNYC interview last month, Reiter said he had talked to many reporters and told them precisely where to find damning evidence against Epstein. But nothing ever came of it.
“He was convinced that a lot of media had squashed the story and he was fed up,” she said.
Reiter warned Brown what would happen were she to continue digging: “Somebody’s going to call your publisher and the next thing you know you are going to be assigned to the obituaries department.”
Brown did not heed his warning. She flung herself at the investigation and eventually persuaded Reiter to go on record. Her resulting, award-winning three-part series last November exposed a vast operation in which 80 potential victims were identified, some as young as 13 and 14 at the time of the alleged abuse. She persuaded eight to tell their stories.
Somebody’s going to call your publisher and the next thing you know you are going to be assigned to obituaries
Brown also exposed a government cover-up in which Epstein got away with an exceptionally light sentence that saw him serve only 13 months in jail. She discovered that a “non-prosecution agreement” had been negotiated secretly in 2008 by the then top federal prosecutor in Miami, Alexander Acosta, that gave Epstein and his co-conspirators immunity from federal prosecution.
In 2017, Acosta was appointed by Donald Trump as labor secretary, a post that ironically is responsible for combating sex trafficking.
The media’s handling – or mishandling – of the Epstein affair is a story of extremes.
It is a heartwarming success story, of how one intrepid reporter pierced the veil of secrecy and found the truth. Brown’s coverage has had consequences: Epstein was arrested last Saturday and indicted on new sex trafficking charges by New York prosecutors who praised her work. In the fallout, Acosta was forced to resign.
But there is also a less cheerful narrative. Why did the police chief’s appeals to the media fall on deaf ears? Why would so many years pass before the shocking extent of Epstein’s crimes and Acosta’s sweetheart deal were revealed by a local newspaper with severely limited resources?
In fact, the two extremes of the story are directly linked: Brown told WNYC one of the reasons she began looking into Epstein was that she was puzzled about the public silence surrounding him.
“There really was nobody pursuing this at all,” she said. “That was one of the things that intrigued me about this case. Why isn’t anyone standing up and screaming?”
‘I believe him … I’m Canadian’
That silence stretches all the way back to 2003, when Vicky Ward wrote a profile of Epstein for Vanity Fair. During her reporting, she was introduced to a mother and her two daughters from Phoenix, Arizona who alleged Epstein assaulted the girls, one of whom was 16 at the time.
Ward told the Guardian she spent a lot of time with the family discussing whether they should go public.
“They were frightened,” she said. “The mother told me that every night when she walked the dog she looked over her shoulder.”
I asked the women what they were going to do and they said they would lick their wounds and retreat
Eventually, the women agreed to go on the record, Ward said, and when Epstein was told about their accounts he went “berserk”. Epstein had already threatened to get a witch doctor to put a curse on Ward’s unborn children – she was pregnant with twins at the time – and now he campaigned to stop Vanity Fair publishing the allegations, even turning up unannounced at the office of the then editor, Graydon Carter.
Publication was delayed, then Ward was told the paragraphs on the abuse of the women had been deleted.
“I was extraordinarily upset,” she said. “I asked the women what they were going to do and they said they would lick their wounds and retreat, as this was exactly what they feared would happen.”
Ward believes Carter caved under Epstein’s pressure. She recalls confronting the editor about the excised paragraphs, and said she has a note in her archives that has Carter saying: “I believe him … I’m Canadian.”
Carter remembers events very differently. In his account there were legal issues around the women’s stories that prevented publication, most significantly that the women themselves were unwilling to go on the record.
In a statement to the Guardian, Carter said: “I respected the work Vicky Ward did at Vanity Fair but unfortunately her recounting of the facts around the Epstein article is inaccurate. There were not three sources on the record and therefore this aspect of the story did not meet our legal and editorial standards.”
Ward says she has documentary evidence that shows the women were emphatically prepared to go public, including fact-checkers’ and legal emails to Epstein from Vanity Fair asking for his response to the allegations made by both sisters.
The Guardian spoke to the mother of the girls, Janice Farmer. She said all three did speak to Ward in 2003 and told her on the record what Epstein had done, including allegations he had invited her youngest daughter, then 16, to his New Mexico ranch and molested her.
“I was hesitant to go public because I was worried about the safety of my daughters – by that point I didn’t trust Jeffrey at all,” Farmer said. “But I did want him to be exposed.”
She said she recalls vividly agreeing with Ward along with her daughters for their stories to be told in her Vanity Fair profile. She also said she recalls vividly her reaction when she learnt that part of the piece was not to be published.
“I felt angry,” she said. “I felt like Jeffrey’s money, power, connections – whatever – had been put into play.”
My journalism benefited from #MeToo as we [started] giving these cases much more scrutiny
There is another complicating element to the story. In 2011, after Epstein had gone to jail, Ward wrote a blogpost for Vanity Fair. In it she used language that was strikingly uncritical of Epstein, referring to him as “not without humor” and praising him for being highly knowledgable.
She referenced Epstein’s sex crimes as “sexual peccadilloes” and referred to her 2003 Vanity Fair profile of him, saying it had alluded to his sexual relationships with young women but “didn’t really go there, focusing instead on … how Jeffrey made his money”.
The piece went on: “This is not to say I didn’t hear stories about the girls. I did. But, not knowing quite whom to believe, I concentrated on the intriguing financial mystery instead.”
The Guardian put this blogpost to Ward and she said she regretted writing it. At that point, she said, the victims she had interviewed were not willing to talk. But nonetheless, “this blog did not need to be written – here I am toeing the Vanity Fair party line”.
‘My journalism benefited from #MeToo’
Fast forward to 2007, when Acosta reached his bizarrely lenient plea deal with Epstein. By then, investigators had identified 35 potential victims who said they had been lured into Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion and sexually assaulted.
Yet records obtained by the Miami Herald showed prosecutors led by Acosta actively worked with Epstein’s attorneys to minimize media coverage.
One of Acosta’s prosecutors wrote in an email to Jay Lefkowitz, an Epstein lawyer: “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?”
That Acosta felt that he had to resign on Friday was an indication that the collective failure of US media to grapple with a story of serial sex trafficking and abuse that had been hiding in plain sight for years no longer holds true. In the wake of Brown’s exemplary reporting, the rest of the American media has fallen in line. Acosta paid the price.
That may in part be thanks to the #MeToo movement that had not erupted when Brown began her investigation but did draw attention to her work when it was published. As she told MSNBC after Epstein’s arrest last weekend: “My journalism benefited from #MeToo as we [started] giving these cases much more scrutiny.”
Mary Angela Bock, associate professor in the University of Texas at Austin’s school of journalism, said #MeToo had dented the prevailing patriarchy that has existed in newsrooms for decades and that had led to sexual crimes being overlooked as merely “the way of the world”.
“#MeToo has led to greater awareness among journalists that this is not OK,” she said. “This is not ‘boys being boys’. This is rape and sexual exploitation of children.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... rald-media
by liminalOyster » Sat Jul 13, 2019 10:39 am
by JackRiddler » Sat Jul 13, 2019 12:17 pm
by Harvey » Sat Jul 13, 2019 1:29 pm
by Belligerent Savant » Sat Jul 13, 2019 1:52 pm
by JackRiddler » Sat Jul 13, 2019 2:42 pm
by Elvis » Sat Jul 13, 2019 2:48 pm
Grizzly wrote:Slick Willy, on board Epstein's rape children, express...
by liminalOyster » Sat Jul 13, 2019 5:31 pm
JackRiddler » Sat Jul 13, 2019 2:42 pm wrote:It feels like there's been three years of preemptive noise already in QAnon & Pizzagate. Mercy please
by Cordelia » Sat Jul 13, 2019 6:06 pm
The Royal Touch: ERMINE
....historically, ermine was the status quo fur for royalty, and the most sought-after fur for court presentations and official portraiture.
https://www.furinsider.com/the-royal-touch-ermine/
by seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 13, 2019 6:49 pm
random facts girl.
Just a reminder.... Alan Dershowitz was an early employer of Charles Johnson, alt-right rage furby and was one of the architects behind the Pizzagate narrative... leaving his employ just before the UVA Fraternity rape allegations went public, AFAICR.
https://twitter.com/soychicka
Dershowitz v. Boies: Jeffrey Epstein case unleashes war between two legal Goliaths
July 05, 2019 06:17 PM, Updated July 08, 2019 05:11 PM
Julie K. Brown reports after Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest in New York City
Journalist Julie K. Brown reports on Jeffrey Epstein charges of conspiracy and sex trafficking underage girls in New York. By Emily Michot | Daniel A. Varela
It’s a high-stakes war between two of the country’s most powerful lawyers. Their feud, simmering for years, involves accusations of extortion, surreptitious recordings, unethical conduct and underage sex trafficking.
Harvard lawyer Alan Dershowitz has filed four bar complaints in three states — all of which have been dismissed — in a quest to disqualify lawyer David Boies and one of his partners who represent a woman accusing Dershowitz of sexually abusing her when she was underage, newly filed court records show.
The pugnacious Dershowitz, 80, and the equally zealous Boies, 78, have been sparring for decades. In recent years, both have suffered damage to their storied legacies, making this latest clash between the two legal titans one of the most important of their half-century careers.
Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and one of the nation’s most iconic civil libertarians, has defended such notorious clients as Claus von Bulow, Mike Tyson and O.J. Simpson. But after four decades of legal accolades, he is now facing a sex scandal and is forced to clear his own name at a time when he’s being confronted by a barrage of attacks on social media as one of the most fervent legal defenders of President Donald Trump.
Boies has embraced high-profile liberal causes and made history with landmark court cases: He represented Al Gore in the Florida recount dispute in the 2000 election, which he lost; successfully defended press freedom in a lawsuit involving “60 Minutes”; and in 2013 secured a Supreme Court victory overturning a California ban on same-sex marriage.
But Boies’ image has also been tarnished in recent years by his aggressive, and often ruthless, representation of controversial clients such as Hollywood film mogul and accused sex predator Harvey Weinstein and Elizabeth Holmes, founder of a blood-testing company that allegedly defrauded investors and clients.
Dershowitz’s bar complaints — disclosed here for the first time — provide a window into the behind-the-scenes legal drama between two of the world’s most brilliant lawyers. It also reveals new details about an explosive sex trafficking case involving Dershowitz’s former client, Jeffrey Epstein, a New York multimillionaire who, according to investigators, molested more than three dozen girls in Palm Beach in the years 1999 to 2006.
David Boies
David Boies’ fame was cemented by his advocacy in many high-profile cases, including arguing Bush v. Gore in front of the United States Supreme Court on behalf of the Democrat. He has also represented Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a victim of Jeffrey Epstein, who accused both Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz of having sex with her at Epstein’s direction. Andrew Harrer Bloomberg
Dershowitz’s bar complaints against Boies are mentioned in a 36-page filing in federal court in New York Wednesday, as part of a federal civil defamation suit lodged in April against Dershowitz by Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Giuffre, now 35, has claimed that when she was a minor she was directed to have sex with Dershowitz by Epstein, whom Dershowitz staunchly defended.
Dershowitz has repeatedly denied that he had sex with Giuffre — or anyone other than his wife — and in June filed a motion to disqualify Boies and his firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, from representing Giuffre in her defamation case. The firm has been representing Giuffre pro bono since 2014.
On Wednesday, BSF partner Joshua Schiller, son of founding partner Jonathan Schiller, filed papers in federal court in the Southern District of New York opposing the motion to dismiss the firm. The filing includes affidavits by five lawyers who say that Dershowitz either lied or distorted communications he had with them or with Boies involving the Giuffre case.
The attorneys, most of them current or former BSF partners, submitted the statements in connection with bar complaints filed by Dershowitz. The complaints, filed between 2015 and 2017, include: one in New York against Boies; one in Washington, D.C., against one of Boies’ partners, Sigrid McCawley; and two in Florida — one against Boies and another against McCawley, who represents Giuffre.
Dershowitz, in a statement to the Miami Herald, asserts that the lawyers’ affidavits are suspect since most of the attorneys are either members of Boies’ firm or beholden to Boies.
“All the lawyers who have filed accusatory affidavits are Boies partners, former partners [who] depend on Boies referrals, or co-counsel with Boies who share contingency fees. None is in any way independent,’’ Dershowitz said in an email Thursday.
Among the affidavits is one filed by Stanley Pottinger, a former U.S. assistant attorney general for civil rights who is now a principal in Edwards Pottinger, a firm in New York and Fort Lauderdale that specializes in sex abuse cases involving women and children.
The Palm Beach multimillionaire and the girls he sexually abused: A Miami Herald investigation
A Miami Herald investigation into Palm Beach hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein's sexual pyramid scheme targeting underage girls– and why he's a free man today.
Pottinger, who represented Giuffre in 2014, said it was he who enlisted Boies to assist in her case because he predicted that Giuffre would become a target of vicious attacks by powerful and wealthy men she had identified as having sex with her under Epstein’s direction. She needed an aggressive lawyer, one that could stand up to the kind of pressure that they anticipated.
Among those Pottinger mentions whom Giuffre claimed to have had sex with were Dershowitz and Les Wexner, an Ohio billionaire who is owner of the Limited Brands and Victoria’s Secret clothing stores, according to Pottinger’s affidavit.
Two other lawyers, Bradley Edwards, a former state prosecutor in Broward County who is now Pottinger’s partner, and Paul Cassell, a former federal judge in Utah, were also part of Giuffre’s legal team. Cassell, now a law professor at the University of Utah, is considered a legal expert on and advocate for crime victims’ rights.
Pottinger’s affidavit was submitted to the New York bar in 2017 in response to a complaint Dershowitz had filed claiming that Boies and McCawley had a conflict of interest and had committed ethics violations in representing Giuffre.
Pottinger_Headshot-e1510752194576.jpg
Stanley Pottinger, a former assistant attorney general in charge of the civil rights division, got David Boies involved in representing Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
That complaint mirrors his latest motion to dismiss the Boies firm from representing Giuffre in the current defamation case against Dershowitz in New York.
The dispute concerns an eight-day period in January 2015 after Dershowitz went on what he called “a media tour’’ in an effort to clear his name and discredit Giuffre and her attorneys. At the time, Dershowitz did not know that Boies was among those representing Giuffre, court records show.
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.
Epstein case
In December 2014, Cassell and Edwards filed an affidavit by Giuffre as part of a federal Crime Victims’ Rights complaint they had brought six years earlier against the Justice Department in the Epstein case.
In the lawsuit, two of Epstein’s victims claimed that federal prosecutors in Florida had improperly brokered a non-prosecution agreement in 2008 with Epstein and his lawyers without informing them, as was required by law. The deal, negotiated by then-Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, was signed and sealed in secret, and by the time Epstein’s victims learned about the deal — months later — it was too late for them to object.
Epstein was allowed to plead guilty in state court to two prostitution charges and served 13 months in the Palm Beach County jail, where he was given liberal work release, including permission to use his own valet to pick him up at the jail every day and take him to his office in downtown Palm Beach.
Edwards and Cassell argued that the deal was illegal, and in February, a federal judge agreed, affirming that Acosta and other prosecutors violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act by misleading Epstein’s victims into believing that prosecutors and the FBI were still investigating the case when they had quietly disposed of it.
Giuffre, who had fled Epstein to live in Australia when she was 19, was among three dozen girls who were listed by the FBI as victims in the case. In 2014, Cassell and Edwards wanted to add more victims to their lawsuit against the government and, that same year, Giuffre agreed to join the lawsuit.
Edwards and Cassell submitted a sworn affidavit in the case, signed by Giuffre, that detailed how she had been recruited into sex trafficking by Epstein and his then-partner, Ghislaine Maxwell. Giuffre met Maxwell in 2000 when Giuffre was a 16-year-old and working as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s winter home and members-only resort in Palm Beach. (Giuffre’s original affidavit claimed that she was 15, but her employment records subsequently showed that she was 16 when she worked at Mar-a-Lago.)
Giuffre’s affidavit set off a media firestorm when she alleged that one of the people she had been trafficked to by Epstein was Dershowitz. This was a loaded document to add to the victims’ case because Dershowitz had represented Epstein in his criminal investigation and helped negotiate the secret non-prosecution agreement.
The deal included a provision giving immunity to Epstein — and others who were involved in Epstein’s underage sex operation. Many of those co-conspirators have never been identified, and it has given rise to speculation that, if Giuffre’s allegation was true, Dershowitz could have been among those who may have been covered by the immunity provision.
Dershowitz denied that he was in any way part of Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking operation, and says he has irrefutable evidence that shows he could not have been involved with Giuffre because he has never met her.
In January 2015, in a series of interviews on national TV, Dershowitz demanded that Edwards and Cassell be disbarred. He said, among other things, that the lawyers were prepared “to lie, cheat and steal,’’ and had failed to properly investigate Giuffre’s claims before making her affidavit public. He accused Giuffre of being “a serial liar,’’ prostitute and unfit mother.
Edwards and Cassell promptly sued Dershowitz in Broward County for defamation.
GettyPurchased-Epsten-Dershowitz
Once a friend of presidents, the ultra-rich and the elite of Wall Street’s bankers — plus a major benefactor to Harvard University — Jeffrey Epstein handled portfolios estimated to be worth over $15 billion. Then he became ensnared in a scandal involving the sexual abuse of underage girls. He is seen here, pre-scandal, at left, in conversation with Alan Dershowitz, one of America’s best-known legal experts and a Harvard Law professor emeritus, at a Cambridge event. Dershowitz became a key member of Epstein’s legal team. Rick Friedman Corbis via Getty Images
On Jan. 22, 2015, Dershowitz appeared on the Today Show discussing the case. After the show, he was contacted by lawyer Carlos Sires, who was a partner in Boies’ law firm and knew Dershowitz. Sires, in an affidavit, said he offered to help in any way he could, but did not know at the time that his firm was already representing Giuffre.
Sires said he told Dershowitz that he could not represent him until he cleared it with his bosses. For one thing, Sires said, Dershowitz wanted to negotiate the fee that he would be charged, and that wasn’t something that Sires had the authority to approve.
“Mr. Sires told Dershowitz that the firm would need to run a conflict check before any potential representation was considered, and that the firm’s chairman, Mr. Boies, would need to decide whether to accept the representation and agree on a fee schedule,’’ wrote Schiller in Wednesday’s response.
Eight days later, Sires, after learning that Giuffre was a client of the firm, told Dershowitz he could not represent him for reasons that he could not disclose.
“Darn. I was hoping you could come on board. Thanks for considering it,’’ Dershowitz replied in an email attached to Sires’ affidavit.
Victoria’s Secret owner accused
Dershowitz contends that during that eight-day period, he sent Sires confidential information about his legal strategy and that the firm used that information to help Giuffre’s case. This information would form the basis for Dershowitz to try to remove Boies and any other member of the firm from representing Giuffre.
Such a move would have been devastating for Giuffre, since it would be unlikely that another firm would take on her case pro bono, setting a terrible legal precedent for other sexual assault victims, Schiller argued.
Moreover, Schiller and Sires claim that Dershowitz did not submit anything to the firm that was not already part of the court record. The firm nevertheless took steps to insulate Dershowitz’s communications with Sires, a legal process that is common, especially among large law firms where potential conflicts can arise between lawyers who unintentionally bump up against clients on opposing sides of a case.
Months later, Dershowitz reached out to one of the firm’s former partners, David S. Stone, to ask him to get him a meeting with Boies, records show. By then, however, McCawley — who was based in Fort Lauderdale — was the lead attorney handling Giuffre’s case.
Boies said, in an affidavit, that he had not returned Dershowitz’s phone calls because he felt that Dershowitz was trying to go around McCawley. But he reluctantly agreed to meet with Dershowitz as a favor to Stone.
On May 19, 2015, Boies and Stone met with Dershowitz. Stone and other lawyers said that Dershowitz was eager to settle the matter by getting Giuffre to sign a document stating she was mistaken in identifying Dershowitz.
Beyond that, the content and context of those conversations is disputed, with Dershowitz insisting that Boies said he believed that Giuffre was “wrong, all wrong’’ — and with Boies and Stone saying nothing of the sort was said.
“Mr. Dershowitz has asserted that at a meeting on May 19 at which I was present, Mr. Boies stated ‘[Giuffre] was mistaken in naming me as someone with whom she had sex’ and that if ‘[Boies] failed to persuade her of that fact, he would leave her representation to Edwards and Cassell and no longer represent her.’ Mr. Boies did not say that on May 19 or at any other time I was present,’’ Stone said.
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.
Boies, in an affidavit, said he and the other lawyers thoroughly vetted Giuffre and believed she was credible. But as a precaution, Boies asked Giuffre to take a polygraph test, which she passed.
Boies and Dershowitz continued to have phone conversations — at least two of which Dershowitz acknowledges he recorded without Boies’ permission. It is legal in some states to tape someone without their permission. Dershowitz says he didn’t break the law.
“If this case comes to trial, a key witness will be David Boies, who told me in a recorded statement that his own client was ‘wrong ... simply wrong’ in accusing me because it would have been ‘impossible’ for me to have been in the places where she claims to have met me,’’ Dershowitz said in a statement to the Herald.
“Boies can’t be both a key witness, whose credibility is central to the case, and the key lawyer whose firm is litigating the case. He has no choice but to be a witness as a result of his exculpatory words.’’
Boies said Dershowitz’s recordings were doctored and taken out of context.
“In June and July 2015, I had two meetings with Mr. Dershowitz and Mr. Stone and several telephone calls with Mr. Dershowitz in which Mr. Dershowitz argued that he did not have and could not have had, sex with Ms. Giuffre. After extensive consideration of everything Mr. Dershowitz told and showed me, I ultimately concluded that his denials were not credible,’’ Boies said in a 2017 affidavit.
“Edwards and Cassell settled their defamation claim with Dershowitz in 2015. A judge ordered them to drop Giuffre’s affidavit from the victims’ rights case, and Dershowitz proclaimed victory, even though Boies has said the case was settled in Edwards’ and Cassell’s favor. Giuffre stood by her claims, and nothing in the judge’s statement or the settlement addressed the truth or falsity of her allegations against Dershowitz.
VirginiaRoberts 08.jpg
This widely published photo of Virginia Roberts Giuffre with Prince Andrew bolstered her claim that she was loaned out for sexual purposes to famous men by Jeffrey Epstein. Copy Photo Courtesy of Virginia Roberts
The lawsuits continued, with Giuffre suing Maxwell in 2015, also for defamation. As part of that case, another woman, Sarah Ransome, came forward, claiming that Epstein and Maxwell also directed her to have sex with Dershowitz against her will when she was 22 years and being trafficked by the couple.
Dershowitz by then was accusing Boies and McCawley of extortion, claiming that they were part of the team of lawyers that concocted a plot to extort money from Wexner — another claim that Boies denies.
Wexner, 81, a longtime client of Epstein’s, has not responded to the Herald’s requests for comment.
In court papers, Boies has denied there were ever any demands or discussions involving money with Wexner or his lawyers.
A Boies partner based in Miami, Stephen N. Zack, however, said that starting in January 2015 there was a series of conversations and meetings between BSF lawyers and Wexner’s attorneys. Boies personally attended one of those meetings on July 8, 2015, Zack stated in a 2017 affidavit.
“I have read Mr. Dershowitz’s claim that there was a ‘plot’ and ‘conspiracy” to extort Mr. Wexner. There was no such “plot” or “conspiracy,’ ‘’ Zack wrote. “We requested information from Mr. Wexner’s counsel. At no time in my conversations or in my presence did anyone make any threat or any demand for money or anything else of value from Mr. Wexner or his counsel.’’
It is unclear what those discussions involved, but Giuffre has not filed any claims against Wexner.
Dershowitz has nevertheless continued to publicize his theory about Wexner. In court documents, he has cited another prominent man, Nathan Myhrvold, 55, the former chief of technology of Microsoft.
Dershowitz theorizes that Giuffre has mistaken Dershowitz for Myhrvold, because, he says, Myhrvold looks similar. (Myhrvold has red hair, a beard and glasses.)
The Herald has been unsuccessful in reaching Myhrvold for comment. Myhrvold was among those in Epstein’s circle of prominent friends who often dined at Epstein’s palatial Manhattan home, according to a 2011 Vanity Fair article.
While Dershowitz publicly urged Giuffre and Boies to sue him for defamation — saying that he would welcome the case as an opportunity to prove his innocence — he is now asking the judge to dismiss the complaint, saying the First Amendment gave him the right to defend himself.
For his part, Boies said that Dershowitz is risking his own credibility, not only in this case, but in the court of public opinion.
“It’s very dangerous to take one position publicly and another position in court,’’ Boies said. “Eventually, both the public and the court figure out that you’re lying and you lose your credibility in both forums and that’s what he has been doing — trying to take one position publicly and another in court — and they are now clashing.’’
This article has been updated to correct the last name of Elizabeth Holmes.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/ ... 12102.html
by Belligerent Savant » Sat Jul 13, 2019 8:57 pm
Following the arrest of pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein last Saturday, many outlets have turned their attention to his longtime confiante, socialite heiress Ghislaine Maxwell - who has been accused by three women of procuring and training young girls to perform massage and sexual acts on the 66-year-old registered sex offender and his associates.
Maxwell, 57, comes from money. Her father was publisher Robert Maxwell - who himself faced accusations of being a Mossad double (and possibly triple) agent and a "bad character" who was "almost certainly financed by Russia," according to the British Foreign Office. Robert Maxwell died in 1991 when he fell from his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine - however the circumstances surrounding his demise have been rife with speculation (including that it was a Mossad assassination - a theory which attorney and longtime Epstein associate Alan Dershowitz slammed in a 2003 op-ed).
It is unknown exactly how Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell met - however they reportedly dated around 1992, shortly after her father's death. After breaking up, they remained good friends. In 1995, Epstein renamed a now-defunct Palm Beach company "Ghislaine Corp," which was dissolved in 1998 per the Wall Street Journal. In 2003, Epstein described Maxwell as his "best friend," who was not on his payroll - yet "seems to organize much of his life."The Oxford-educated Maxwell, described by many as a man-eater (she flies her own helicopter and was recently seen dining with [Bill]Clinton at Nello’s on Madison Avenue), lives in her own townhouse a few blocks away. Epstein is frequently seen around town with a bevy of comely young women but there has been no boldfaced name to replace Maxwell. “You may read about Jeffrey in the social columns, but there is much more to him than that,” says Jeffrey T. Leeds of the private equity firm Leeds Weld & Co. -New York Magazine (2002)
Maxwell also attended Chelsea Clinton's wedding - and has been linked to other prominent people such as Prince Andrew, Donald Trump and Alan Dershowitz.
[Prince Andrew, Ghislaine Maxwell and Virginia Roberts - who claims to have seen Bill Clinton on Epstein's infamous island while she was being sex-trafficked.]
Accusations of recruiting underage girls
Maxwell was accused by alleged Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre of recruiting the then-15-year-old into sexual slavery while she was working at a towel girl at President Trump's Mar-a-Lago club.
Giuffre asserts in her complaint that Maxwell, the sole defendant in the suit and the daughter of late publishing magnate Robert Maxwell, routinely recruited underaged girls for Epstein and was doing so when she approached the $9-an-hour locker room attendant at Mar-a-Lago in 1999 about giving massages to the wealthy investment banker.
Giuffre alleges that Maxwell ultimately trained her in how to give “massages” to Epstein that involved sex acts and, essentially, prostitution. When Maxwell publicly denied the allegations and called Giuffre a liar in 2015, that gave her the opening to head to federal court and file the defamation suit now headed for trial. -Politico
According to court filings, Maxwell was said to have hired, supervised and fired household staff, while directing the visits of dozens of "massage therapists" to Epstein's residence, according to the Journal.
In depositions taken in 2009 and 2010 as part of civil lawsuits against Mr. Epstein, household employees said Ms. Maxwell was a central figure in Mr. Epstein’s private life. Several said Ms. Maxwell hired, supervised, and fired household staff, while directing the visits of dozens of "massage therapists”—typically young women.
Juan Alessi, who said in one of the depositions that he served as the Palm Beach house manager from around 1992 through 2002, described a basket of sex toys in Ms. Maxwell’s bathroom closet. He said he would find them around when he cleaned up after visits from the young women. -WSJ
Maxwell was accused in a 2014 court filing of being a "co-conspirator in Epstein's sexual abuse" and of taking "numerous sexually explicit pictures of underage girls involved in sexual activities," which included Giuffre. Maxwell has called the claims "obvious lies."
The accusations were made as early as 2009 in lawsuits covering conduct that allegedly occurred from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. Together with the federal indictment in New York against Mr. Epstein, the civil cases describe an enterprise centered on procuring and sexually exploiting young women, and intimidating them into silence.
One accuser in a 2017 lawsuit called Ms. Maxwell “the highest-ranking employee” of that alleged enterprise, a role in which she was said to have had managed Mr. Epstein’s household and his sex life. -WSJ
While Maxwell hasn't been charged in connection with any of Epstein's activities, more information on their relationship is expected to be revealed in the coming weeks. Prior to Epstein's arrest, a federal appeals court in New York ordered the unsealing of up to 2,000 pages of court documents from a 2017 lawsuit against Maxwell - a decision her attorney says they will challenge.
by Elvis » Sat Jul 13, 2019 10:26 pm
JackRiddler wrote: if anything is unconfirmed, and unsourced, especially visual evidence, it should absolutely be labeled as such. And if it's photoshopped to look like it's real when it isn't, it absolutely should be kept away from threads about the Epstein case. There is no lack of noise out there.
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