Why do people think that someone like Cassie, or almost anyone can just start a criminal investigation? it doesn't work like that. Especially when you are talking about things going back to 2005. And the timeline on that could be years. It could not be, but it's all a gamble. I think people have a bias obviously, but also, like a fictionalized idea of how bureacracies like a DA's office or US Attorneys Office works.
I would love to hear or maybe not, how Cassie does this. She just walks into 1 Andrew Plaza and says "Puff assaulted me". They will say ok. Let me see what we can do. And then they will run that to their superiors, or will run that by their superiors, and all the way up the chain of command. At ANY point anything could derail that. They could have a conflict in jurisdictions. A supervisor who doesn't care about sex trafficing cases, or recently lost a high profile one.
Truthfully, an ambtious AUSA in Eastern or Southern District could take a run at this. If they filed an indictment against Epstein and R Kelly, they could make this prosecution.
Remember when Weinstein, in real time, groped and assaulted a woman, she went straight to the police, and they took a run at him? Got him on tape, and ended up not filing charges. This was in 2015.