Posted on 07/25/2010 4:30:34 AM PDT by combat_boots
Hedge fund mogul and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who went free this week, lived in a depraved world of thrice-daily massages, pornographic artwork, and hush money—that’s only now being revealed. Conchita Sarnoff follows up on her investigation of the legal wrangling that saved him from a long prison term and reports on the sordid details in part two of her exclusive exposé. Also:
• Victims alleged that Epstein molested underage girls from South America, Europe, and the former Soviet republics, including three 12-year-old girls brought over from France as a birthday gift.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-22/jeffrey-epstein-pedophile-billionaire-and-his-sex-den/
It should say “Bill Clinton’s Best Friend” until the jerk got arrested ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2558600/posts
• Earlier versions of the U.S attorney’s charges, including a sealed 53-page indictment, could have landed Epstein in prison for 20 years.
• Victims alleged that Epstein molested underage girls from South America, Europe, and the former Soviet republics, including three 12-year-old girls brought over from France as a birthday gift.
• The victims also alleged trips out of state and abroad on Epstein’s private jets, which would be evidence of sex trafficking—a much more serious federal crime than the state charges Epstein was convicted of.
• Epstein’s attorneys investigated members of the Palm Beach Police Department, while others ordered private investigators to follow and intimidate the victims’ families; one even posed as a police officer.
• Then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told The Daily Beast that he “would have instructed the Justice Department to pursue justice without making a political mess.”
Film director Roman Polanski is not the only convicted pedophile to walk free this month and return to a life of privilege. On Wednesday, hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein completes his one-year house arrest in Palm Beach, which has been even less arduous than Polanski’s time at a Swiss ski chalet.
Watch Jeffrey Epstein Storm Out of a Deposition When Asked About His Penis
During Epstein’s term of “house arrest,” he made several trips each month to his New York home and his private Caribbean island. In the earlier stage of his sentence for soliciting prostitution with a minor—13 months in the Palm Beach Stockade—he was allowed out to his office each day.
Meanwhile, Epstein has settled more than a dozen lawsuits brought by the underage girls who were recruited to perform “massages” at his Palm Beach mansion. Seven victims reached a last-minute deal last week, days before a scheduled trial; each received well over $1 million—an amount that will hardly dent Epstein’s $2 billion net worth.
billionaire?
With that, the known victims of Epstein’s sexual compulsion have been officially silenced, and the case against him is closed unless new ones come forward.
According to banking sources, he has been moving assets out of the U.S.
and may well follow Polanski into a luxurious exile.
But the question remains:
Did Epstein’s wealth and social connections—
former President Bill Clinton;
Prince Andrew;
former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak;
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson;
and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers
were just a few of the prominent passengers on his private jets—allow him to receive only a slap on the wrist for crimes that carry a mandatory 20-year sentence?
Was he able, with his limitless assets and heavy-hitting lawyers—
Alan Dershowitz,
Gerald Lefcourt,
Roy Black,
Kenneth Starr,
Guy Lewis, and
Martin Weinberger among them—
to escape equal justice?
Yes.
Money talks.
More on this amazing miscarriage of “justice” !!!
The Palm Beach Police Department identified 17 local girls who had contact with Epstein before the age of consent;
the youngest was 14, and many were younger than 16.
And that was just at one of Epstein’s many homes around the world—he also owns property in New York, Santa Fe, Paris, London, and the Caribbean.
Subsequent investigation by the FBI, reaching as far back as 2001, indentified roughly 40 victims, not counting Nadia Marcinkova, whom Epstein referred to as his “Yugoslavian sex slave” because he had imported her from the Balkans at age 14. Now 24, Marcinkova became a member of the household and is alleged to have participated in the sexual contact with underage girls.
Epstein quickly got wind of the investigation, and progress on the case got messy very quickly. He hired a squad of lawyers and private investigators and dispatched influential friends to pressure the police into backing off.
Instead, local detectives pressed on and brought the matter to the attention of the FBI. The detectives asked their federal colleagues whether the fact that some victims appeared to have traveled out of state on Epstein’s planes—plus the use of interstate phone service to arrange assignations—might be violations of the federal 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which carries a minimum sentence of 20 years. (Florida enacted the federal TVPA in 2002.)
So when State Attorney Barry Krischer, who also ran Florida’s Crimes Against Children Unit, proved reluctant to mount a vigorous prosecution of Epstein, saying the local victims were not credible witnesses, Chief Reiter wrote the attorney a letter complaining of the state’s “highly unusual” conduct and asking him to remove himself from the case. He did not, and the evidence his office presented to a state grand jury produced only a single count of soliciting prostitution. (Krischer has since retired and would not comment for this article.) The day after that indictment was returned, Reiter was relieved to have the FBI step in and take over the investigation.
How could this hedge fund billionaire get away with so much for so long ??? 40 victims !!!
Oh.
You get the justice you pay for.
Not reported in the main stream media. Democrat? Rich? Pedophilia?
No story.
But in the end Epstein’s legal team refused that deal and threatened to proceed to trial. And that’s where the question of whether the case was “winnable” before a jury again came into play, according to a source in the U.S Attorney’s Office, which shared the state attorney’s view that the prosecution was far from a slam dunk.
For one, it was clear from the start that Epstein would spare no legal expense and that his team of veteran lawyers, whose cases ranged from O.J. Simpson to the investigation of Clinton’s relationship with an intern, would play rough. When the Palm Beach police started to identify victims, according to Detective Joe Recarey’s report,
Dershowitz began sending the detective Facebook and MySpace posts to demonstrate that some of these girls were no angels.
Reiter’s deposition also states that he heard from local private investigators that Dershowitz had launched background checks on both the police chief and Det. Recarey.
Dershowitz denies all of that.
According to Reiter, both he and Recarey also became aware that they were under surveillance for several months, without knowing who ordered it. And the Florida victims began to complain that they and family members were being followed and intimidated by private investigators who were then linked to local attorneys in Epstein’s employ.
In one reported instance, the private investigator claimed to be a police officer, and Reiter considered filing witness-tampering charges.
snip
Each new compromising detail was immediately forwarded to the State Attorney’s Office, where staff met frequently with Epstein’s lawyers.
The Florida statutes are clear: Any person older than 24 who engages in sexual contact with someone under the age of 18 commits a felony of the second degree.
The victim’s prior sexual conduct is not relevant; ignorance of her age is no defense. She needn’t resist physically to cast doubt on the issue of “consent.” For a child under 16, even lewd behavior short of touching is a felony of the second degree. But convincing a jury that a sexual encounter is a heinous crime is difficult if the victim can be made to appear willing and unharmed, not to mention vulgar and mercenary. It wasn’t hard to imagine some of the victims quickly being discredited in court by Epstein’s crack legal team, who repeatedly noted that the age of consent is lower in many other states.
But that doesn’t quite explain why the Department of Justice would forgo the child-trafficking charges, which pertain regardless of a girl’s attitude or character. Epstein’s final sentence is so out of line with the statutory guidelines for that crime that it appears the department may have been influenced by the existence of his many powerful friends and attorneys.
A highly intelligent man who once taught math at the Dalton School in New York without a bachelor’s degree,
Epstein has been a serious and respected player in the highest reaches of politics and philanthropy.
He has made substantial contributions to political candidates, served on the Council on Foreign Relations, and donated $30 million to Harvard University.
Moreover, many of his high-powered acquaintances availed themselves of Epstein’s private jets, for which the pilot logs, obtained by discovery in the civil suits, sometimes showed that bold-face names were on the same flights as underage girls. (tell us these bold faced names, please - editor)
A high-profile trial threatened to splash mud over all sorts of big players (names?), just as both Gov. Richardson and Bill Clinton’s wife were running for president.
Also, a hedge fund prosecution in which Epstein offered to give evidence was heating up. Alberto Gonzales, who was U.S. attorney general throughout most of the Epstein investigation and resigned just before the non-prosecution agreement was signed, told The Daily Beast that he “would have instructed the Justice Department to pursue justice without making a political mess.” But that may have been an impossible mandate, given the players involved.
Instead, said attorney Brad Edwards, “Epstein committed crimes that should have jailed him for most of his life…he was jailed for only a few months.” And this week he walks through his door a free man.
If this guy is simply paying off his victims to stay silent, then it is no shocker that pursuing justice will be next to impossible.
His money won’t help him when he comes face-to-face with the Living God.
Nobody in public life would stand up for this guy or pull strings simply because they knew him. Its not about money either since all the money in the world won’t get you elected if its known you support pedophiles.
Its not Who he knows,its What he knows that gets him a get out of jail free card. Who among the rich and powerful rode on a jet with him and a 16 and under girl? Who participated in his perversions in the Caribbean? That’s his armor,that’s his protection.
Wow. Giant chin. Related to Kerry ?
Kenneth Starr defended this wretch? Lawyers are all scum....some more than others.
I don’t know the answer to that, but it would be smart to know more before such a remark.
Starr’s law firm is huge. They have experts in many fields. It could well be that the firm represented him in a financial matter, a tax matter, a real estate matter; any number of things and at a time before all of this was known.
So the key is when and on what did Starr’s firm represent him.
Epstein is moving to Dubai. At least that what one report said. Lots of chances for pedophilia there I suppose
I read the whole account and sexual intercourse with the girls is never mentioned. The man is scum but I suspect the prosecutors were not able to go after him on claims of actual penetration/intercourse
He transported these youngsters to his residence to give him nude massages which is reprehensible but nothing is mentioned of oral sex, or massaging his penis or intercourse. Maybe it took place. But he sure wasn’t prosecuted for it ...from what I have read
Penetration is not needed to prosecute.
Stop defending this outrage.
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