Epstein Thread: His brother says Barr cover up; Scumbag Alan Dershowitz asked Trump to pardon Maxwell; Epstein commits suicide! :damn:

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There is a greater than 50/50 chance that Maxwell escapes these charges.

Everything we've seen so far suggests that the intelligence connection theory is probably true. Assuming that it's true, the hesitation to pry too deeply by authorities is not going anywhere.

Secondly and more importantly is that the Cosby case will be used by her attorneys to suggest she should be covered under the settlement from 2005 that apparently protects co conspirators from further prosecution.

 

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Was Jeffrey Epstein a Spy?


rollingstone.com
Rolling Stone
Vicky Ward
16-20 minutes
July 15, 2021 1:54PM ET
Was Jeffrey Epstein a Spy?

The notorious financier pedophile told exaggerated stories of his time in intelligence circles — but some of those stories may have been, at least partially, true

Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend Batman Forever/R. McDonald Event on June 13, 1995 in New York City.

Patrick McMullan/Getty Images

Back in 2002, when I was reporting on Jeffrey Epstein’s finances for Vanity Fair magazine, he was not a household name. During that time, I paid a visit to the Federal Medical Center, Devens in Devens, Massachusetts, to meet with an inmate, one Steven Hoffenberg.

We sat in a little room near a recreation area, Hoffenberg dressed in the requisite orange jumpsuit, while I, several months pregnant with twins, was dressed per prison requirements: as shapelessly as possible.

It was an absolutely intriguing meeting.

Hoffenberg was serving 18 years in prison for committing a $450 million Ponzi scheme. In the 1980s, he’d been running Towers Financial, a debt collection and reinsurance business, and had worked alongside Epstein, who was a paid consultant. Hoffenberg told me that Epstein had plans to turn Towers into a global colossus — through illegal means.

But Hoffenberg was so transfixed by Epstein and his ideas that he had even paid the rent for Epstein’s office space. (Now, he says, he was “stupid” and greedy for doing so.)

Hoffenberg told me with a sad grin that he represented a problem for Epstein because while they were working together, Epstein had confided in him as to how, exactly, he made a career out of conning people and institutions — not least because the idea was that they’d do it together.

Hoffenberg said that Epstein had a term for the perfect execution of the grift. He called it “playing the box,” which meant that he ensured that even if his crime was uncovered, the victim would be unable to do anything about it, either because of social embarrassment or because the money was tucked away in a place where they couldn’t either find it or get it.

(What Hoffenberg had failed to realize, he told me, is that Epstein would con him. Epstein would take $100 million of Towers money, move it offshore, and meanwhile cooperate with U.S. prosecutors against Hoffenberg, who was unable to do anything about this because he’d pleaded guilty, which meant there was no trial — and therefore no discovery.)

I can’t prove all of Hoffenberg’s claims — but some of them are accurate.

I have discovered, for example, that Epstein certainly did secretly cooperate against Hoffenberg and gave at least three interviews to prosecutors, and that had the case gone to trial, a source with knowledge says it would have likely turned out far worse for Epstein than for Hoffenberg.

Hoffenberg also knew something else Epstein wanted hidden, according to Hoffenberg: He claimed that Epstein moved in intelligence circles.

The Hoffenberg-Epstein relationship was not something Epstein, then pitching himself to Vanity Fair as a money-manager extraordinaire for billionaires only, had volunteered to me.

So when I gingerly raised Hoffenberg to Epstein, and mentioned I had documentation showing that the two were linked, the financier turned really nasty.

He maintained he hardly knew Hoffenberg, he’d just consulted briefly on a couple of deals, that he’d not been involved in any prosecution of Hoffenberg and that if I wrote any different, things would turn out badly for me. Here is exactly what he said:

“If there’s any implication of wrong doing, I will take legal action against you personally. I’m telling you so you understand. I will be as harsh as I possibly can personally … not for the magazine, but you, because I had this discussion with you. This relationship is with you.… You shouldn’t risk your future for a job.”

Now, Epstein’s “sensitivity” regarding Hoffenberg was equal to his sensitivity on what he called “the girls.”

He went berserk if you mentioned either subject.

In hindsight, one has to wonder if Hoffenberg presented an equally big problem as “the girls” would. Hoffenberg told me that in the 1980s, after Epstein left Bear Sterns in ignominious circumstances, Epstein was trained in moving money off-shore and that a mentor of Epstein’s was someone Hoffenberg knew: a British defense contractor, who died in 2011, named Douglas Leese.

Hoffenberg claimed that Leese was an arms dealer. (Leese’s son Julian says that is not true.) But the U.K. parliamentary record does mention Leese in reference to the El Yammamah arms deal of the early 1980s.

I remember distinctly that in our first meeting Hoffenberg told me that Leese was pivotal in understanding Jeffrey’s MO, because Leese had introduced him not only to aristocratic Europeans (who Epstein subsequently fleeced) but to all sorts of people in the arms business — including the late Turkish-born businessman Adnan Kashoggi — and, allegedly, the late media mogul Robert Maxwell.

Back in 2002 I didn’t pay much attention to this.

This was because Epstein breezily threw me off.

First, Epstein told me he’d never met Maxwell. And I asked him twice if he knew Leese, whom I had never heard of, and Epstein said no. The second time, he elaborated:

“Douglas Leese … I think he was the father of somebody I knew … I think his son was friendly with Ferranti, that’s where that whole crowd comes in that you asked me about a long time ago. I think his name was Nicholas … it was sort of that 66th Street building, I think they might have all lived there.”

So, I forgot about Leese. And I didn’t bother to pursue the notion that Epstein had known Maxwell.

But all these years later, Leese’s name popped up again in my new reporting for a podcast and a documentary series about Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine, who is currently awaiting trial on charges of helping Epstein in his alleged sex-trafficking operations of minors. (She has denied all charges.)

First, I found a lawsuit filed by Leese in Florida, in which he asserted that he “was involved with various highly confidential business enterprises including business in the United States, some of which involved governmentally- involved or other highly confidential business projects.”

Second, a source who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of what was discussed told me that Epstein had invited the source to join him and Leese on a private-jet trip to the Pentagon in 1981.

Even Leese’s son Julian told me that his father was a mentor of sorts to Epstein in the 1980s and was totally shocked that Epstein would have pretended not to know him.

So why Epstein’s silence on Leese?

And was his denial about knowing Robert Maxwell equally meaningless?

What about the spy stuff?

Hoffenberg told me that Epstein had said he’d worked on several projects with Robert Maxwell, including solving Maxwell’s “debt” issues. (Maxwell died in 1991, under vey strange circumstances, apparently having fallen off his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, in the middle of the night and it was discovered in the aftermath that he’d stolen 100s of millions of dollars from the pensions of his employees.)

Epstein had also told Hoffenberg that via Maxwell and Leese he was involved in something that Hoffenberg described as “national security issues,” which he says involved “blackmail, influence trading, trading information at a level that is very serious and dangerous.”

So here’s where it gets tricky.

Four separate sources told me — on the record — that Epstein’s dealings in the arms world in the 1980s had led him to work for multiple governments, including the Israelis.

Some of these sources are more reliable than others. But the gist of the claims that you will be able to hear, and ultimately watch in a three-hour documentary series, is that Maxwell, who was himself a conduit between the Israelis and other governments during his life time, introduced Epstein to Israeli leaders, who then allegedly used Epstein as the equivalent of an old-fashioned Russian “sleeper,” someone who could be useful in an “influence campaign.”

The sources, who range from former arms dealers to former spies — and also Hoffenberg — suggest that Epstein, who lacked any sort of moral compass, decided to go one step further and compromise influential people by recording them doing things they wouldn’t want made public.

All of this is completely unprovable. And people close to Robert Maxwell say it sounds ridiculous.

But here’s what’s odd.

First, Epstein did visit Israel in 2008, with a view to moving there permanently and avoid his jail time in 2009 for the state charges he was convicted of. On his return, he told Russian model Kira Diktyar that he’d changed his mind and decided to face the music. (He didn’t mention he’d avoided a far more serious federal investigation, thanks to a cushy non-prosecution agreement.)

And once he got out of jail, in the last 10 years of his life, Epstein bragged to various people, including journalists, that he was advising a whole assortment of foreign leaders who included Vladimir Putin, Mohammed bin Zayed, Mohammed Bin Salman, various African dictators, Israel, the British — and, of course, the Americans.

He also told several of the same people that he was making a fortune out of arms, drugs, and diamonds.

He told one person, journalist Edward J. Epstein, that he knew the owner of the deep-water port of Djibouti on the horn of Africa, a smuggler’s paradise, so well that he was basically in charge of it.

Now, according to my sources in the intelligence world, this is hyperbole — but also not completely ridiculous. His name was mentioned as a middleman in both Africa and the Middle East. He was known in the intelligence world as a “hyper-fixer,” somebody who can go between different cultures and networks.

Usually these people are very silent about what they do.

And yet Epstein was not silent. He had a photo of the Saudi crown prince, MBS on the wall, and photos of Bill Gates and all the VIPS who flocked to his salons.

It’s not wholly surprising therefore that the same sources who say they know he was some sort of intelligence asset say that he became a liability — which is why, possibly, he lost any “protection” and was arrested.

A handful of people I interviewed, including former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky, maintain that this is exactly what happened to Robert Maxwell, which is why, they say, Maxwell was killed. His financial problems were about to make him vulnerable. (His death was officially said to be because of a heart attack.)

Who knows what to make of all this?

But, when I think back to 2002, when I first met Steve Hoffenberg, I do remember asking him why he thought that Epstein, normally reclusive, had raised his head above the parapet and attracted media attention by flying Bill Clinton to Africa.

Hoffenberg had smiled.

“He can’t help himself. He broke his own rule,” Hoffenberg said. “He always said he knew the only way he could get away with everything he did was to stay under the radar, but now he’s gone and blown it.”

Vicky Ward is the host of the Audible Original podcast “Chasing Ghislaine,” which premieres July 15th.

 

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“You Have to Let Them Do Whatever They Want”: Billionaire Leon Black Flew a Russian Model to Meet Jeffrey Epstein, New Legal Filing Claims

“You Have to Let Them Do Whatever They Want”: Billionaire Leon Black Flew a Russian Model to Meet Jeffrey Epstein, New Legal Filing Claims
According to former Russian model Guzel Ganieva’s suit, Black referenced Epstein’s proclivity for “very young girls,” and once flew her to Florida against her will “to satisfy the sex needs of Epstein, his ‘best friend.’”

By Gabriel Sherman

August 9, 2021

Leon Black, chairman and chief executive officer of Apollo Management LP, speaks at the 2010 Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles, California.Jonathan Alcorn/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

In early October 2008, the world’s financial system teetered on the brink of collapse. Congress raced to pass the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. Millions of Americans were being thrown out of work. And according to a new legal filing, billionaire Leon Black, the former CEO of private equity behemoth Apollo Global Management, was flying a Russian model from New York to Palm Beach, Florida, to meet Jeffrey Epstein for the first time.

The former model, Guzel Ganieva, makes the shocking allegation that Black trafficked her to Epstein in an amended complaint that’s the latest salvo in her ongoing lawsuit against Black. In June, Ganieva sued Black in New York State Court. She alleged that Black defamed her when he publicly denied her claims that he “sexually harassed and abused” her, and he pressured her to sign a nondisclosure agreement and paid her to keep quiet. Black told Bloomberg in April that he “foolishly had a consensual affair” with Ganieva but strenuously denied abusing her. Ganieva’s original lawsuit included graphic allegations that Black raped her in 2014 and that Black possesses a “violent, abusive, predatory, vindictive and brutal side…that he has shielded from public view for decades.”

In July, Black’s lawyers filed a 52-page response to Ganieva’s lawsuit. It called Ganieva’s suit “a work of fiction,” stated that Ganieva had extorted Black, and mysteriously hinted that she is working for “a third party who might wish Mr. Black ill.” Black’s lawyers say they have text messages and audio recordings that prove Ganieva isn’t telling the truth.

Ganieva’s attorney, Jeanne Christensen, said, “If Black believes that his billions will allow him to escape liability for his ruthless treatment of Guzel Ganieva, he is sorely mistaken.”

The disturbing claims and counterclaims are the latest stain on Black’s once pristine public image that has been sullied by his reported ties to Epstein. In January, the then 69-year-old Black stunned Wall Street by announcing he would step down as CEO of Apollo, the firm he founded. An investigation commissioned by Apollo’s board of directors had uncovered that Black paid Epstein $158 million in fees between 2012 and 2017—after Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a teenage girl.

Black’s $158 million payments to Epstein amounted to less than 2% of Black’s reported $10 billion net worth. The staggering sum Black paid Epstein, a college dropout and former high school math teacher, for “tax advice” and “estate planning” fueled rampant speculation among bankers that there must be a lot more to Epstein and Black’s relationship. The rumor mill spun faster in late March, when Black abruptly left Apollo months earlier than expected and then stepped down from the board of New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. It was a stunning fall for Black, whom Bloomberg once dubbed “the most feared man in the most aggressive realm of finance.”

Throughout, Black maintained that his relationship with Epstein was strictly professional and that, while they socialized together, he knew nothing about the convicted pedophile’s sexual abuse. “I was completely unaware of Mr. Epstein’s abhorrent misconduct that came to light in late 2018,” Black said in January, adding: “I did not engage in any wrongdoing or inappropriate conduct.”

But Ganieva’s latest court filing alleges, for the first time, that Black “made multiple comments to Ms. Ganieva about Epstein’s sexual proclivities.” The lawsuit claims Black told Ganieva that Epstein flew “very young girls” aboard his private plane. The suit doesn’t say whether Black knew if any of these girls were under 18. It claims, though, that Black told Ganieva that Epstein made money because “he takes care of the little girls” and was “doing a great job with it.” According to the complaint, Black had at least one sexual relationship with another Russian woman he met through Epstein.

Most shocking, however, is Ganieva’s allegation that Black flew her “to Florida without her consent, to satisfy the sex needs of Epstein, his ‘best friend.’”

Black’s attorney, Danya Perry, said in regard to the new claims that “Ms. Ganieva had six years to prepare her initial complaint in this case…She now claims to recall in August supposedly crucial events and connections that somehow had slipped her mind at the time of her June filing. But just like her June complaint, Ms. Ganieva’s story today is demonstrably and transparently false and betrays her willingness to say anything and fabricate a story in the hope something will stick.”

According to Ganieva’s suit, the incident happened in October 2008, several months after she met Black. She states that Black invited her to lunch in Manhattan, but when he picked her up, he instead told her he was taking her to Florida to meet an unnamed friend. Black allegedly drove Ganieva to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, where they boarded a private plane. Ganieva states that once they were on the jet, Black told her they were flying to Palm Beach to meet his “friend” Epstein. (To pinpoint the date of the flight, Ganieva’s lawyers say they have subpoenaed flight records from Teterboro and Palm Beach International airports.)



Ganieva alleges Black told her not to tell anyone about the trip and, bizarrely, threatened to frame her for drug possession if she did. “Black specifically used heroin as an example of an illicit drug that would be problematic for her if he planted it on her,” the lawsuit states.

In Palm Beach, Ganieva alleges Black drove her to a mansion that was being guarded by a sheriff’s deputy. As part of Epstein’s sweetheart plea deal in 2008 that shielded him from federal prosecution, a judge granted Epstein work-release privileges that allowed him to leave the county lockup for 12 hours a day. Epstein reportedly spent some of this time in his home at 358 El Brillo Way when in fact he should have been at his office. Epstein also reportedly had sexual encounters with young women during work release.

Ganieva states that when they arrived at Epstein’s mansion, Epstein’s assistant, Sarah Kellen, greeted them. Ganieva claims Black and Epstein were almost lying down. According to the lawsuit:

Black and Epstein were situated close to one another, each facing Ms. Ganieva while in almost supine positions, as if they were waiting for her to get on top of them. Indeed, Black indicated with his eyes that he wanted Ms. Ganieva to come and lay in between him and Epstein. Alarmed and shocked, Ms. Ganieva remembers standing in front of them unable to say anything while they just stared up at her, saying nothing, but clearly expecting her to do something...As she continued to stand there in silence, Black became visibly annoyed. He eventually told her to leave the room.​

Ganieva claims that after the unsettling encounter she went to the living room. “You have to understand that [Jeffrey and Leon] are sex addicts,” Kellen said, according to the lawsuit. “You have to let them do whatever they want with you, and you have to let them be with multiple sexual partners if that’s what they want. They are very powerful, and if you don’t do what they want you to do, there will be consequences that I do not want for you.” Ganieva states she told Kellen she wouldn’t have sex with Epstein. The stay in Palm Beach lasted no more than two hours, Ganieva claims. She alleges Black did not speak to her on the flight back to New York.


Over the years, Ganieva states Black pressured her to have threesomes—which she refused to do—and that he performed “sadistic” sex acts on her (the specific acts are redacted in the suit). “On some occasions, the pain was so extreme that Ms. Ganieva believes she lost consciousness or fainted,” the lawsuit says. Ganieva alleges they would usually meet at Black’s studio apartment across the street from his family’s apartment on East 72nd Street.


Black often brought up Epstein in conversation and would frequently text with Epstein in her presence, the lawsuit states. Ganieva alleges Black told her in 2014, years after meeting Epstein: “you are too old for [Epstein], he likes them young.”

The lawsuit says Black even invoked Epstein when Black leaned on Ganieva to sign a nondisclosure agreement in 2015. “Black would warn that Ms. Ganieva would ‘die’ if she ever spoke about Epstein and Epstein’s relationship with Black, and that he would pay people to destroy Ms. Ganieva’s life if she ever did so,” the lawsuit says.

 

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timesofisrael.com
For writer who broke Epstein case, a rumored Mossad link is worth digging into
By JP O’ Malley 26 July 2021, 4:23 am Edit
13-17 minutes
Did the now-deceased, disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have links to the Israeli intelligence community? An investigative reporter for The Miami Herald claims that credible details making the link “are not far-fetched and need to be explored in further detail and examined.”

“It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Epstein had connections to the [Israeli intelligence community],” says Julie K. Brown, whose book “Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story” was released on July 20.

“Robert Maxwell certainly had those kinds of connections, and Epstein had a close relationship with Robert Maxwell,” the 59-year-old American journalist told The Times of Israel via Zoom call from her home in Hollywood, Florida.

Brown keenly stresses the striking similarities between Jeffrey Epstein’s death in August 2019 and Robert Maxwell’s death in November 1991. The 68-year-old British media mogul was said to have drowned after falling from his luxurious yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, near the Canary Islands. Spanish police insisted no foul play was suspected in Maxwell’s death, but rumors about how exactly Maxwell died have never gone away. One theory points to a possible suicide. Another claims Maxwell was assassinated by the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency, for which he was secretly working.

Maxwell is buried on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives. Many members of the Israeli intelligence community attended his funeral. So too did Yitzhak Shamir, Israel’s then-prime minister. Shamir eulogized the British tyc00n for the political connections he brought to Israel during the 1980s, and for the money he invested in it.

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Two years ago, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, 66-year-old American financier Epstein was found hanging in his cell in a Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. Since then, numerous theories have swirled about Epstein’s true cause of death, making the leap from conspiracy fodder into the cultural mainstream.

Julie K. Brown, author of ‘Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story.’ (Eileen Soler)

According to Brown, “neither the FBI nor the United States Justice Department have convinced me that Jefferey Epstein committed suicide.”

“Why would Epstein give up before he even got to court?” Brown asks. She also points to a number of other murky details: Epstein breaking three bones in his neck before he died, and the fact that the two prison guards who were supposed to be keeping a watchful eye on Epstein in his Manhattan jail cell mysteriously fell asleep at the same time.

“It just defies common sense,” Brown says. “And why are [US] authorities not making the information they do know about Epstein’s death public?”

The Israel connection
One chapter in Brown’s latest book argues that the complex relationship Jeffery Epstein had with the Maxwell family may provide further answers. That history stretches back to the mid-1980s, when Epstein allegedly began helping Robert Maxwell hide money in numerous offshore bank accounts.

Maxwell, a self-made billionaire, was born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch, into a poor, Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish family in Czechoslovakia in 1923. Maxwell lost both his parents in the Holocaust, and later made his fortune in the book publishing and newspaper industries.

He went on to become a parliamentary representative for Britain’s Labour Party, but the final years of Maxwell’s life were plagued by financial trouble and earned him the nickname “the crook of the century.” Maxwell defaulted on $2 billion worth of loans and subsequently raided millions of pounds from his company’s retirement fund, even stealing from his own staff’s pensions and shares in Britain’s Mirror Group as he refused to face his inevitable bankruptcy.

An undated photo of British newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell, who was found dead in the sea off the Canary Islands in November 1991, following a reported fall from his yacht. (AP Photo)

Following Robert Maxwell’s death three decades ago, Epstein became an important figure to certain members of the Maxwell family, who were then left bankrupt and riddled with debt. Brown notes, for instance, that Epstein attended an event at New York’s Plaza Hotel on November 24, 1991, at which the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research paid tribute to Robert Maxwell.

The author also speculates that Epstein may have even offered financial assistance to Robert Maxwell’s wife Elizabeth when she became a widow. Epstein then became romantically involved with Elizabeth and Robert Maxwell’s ninth child, Ghislaine.

Known to be her father’s favorite child and his most trusted confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell may have been aware of many secrets her father took to the grave relating to his controversial political, financial, and espionage life, believes Brown.

The body of the late Robert Maxwell is interred at the Jerusalem Jewish Mount of Olives cemetery on November 10, 1991. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

A budding relationship
After her father’s death, Ghislaine Maxwell moved from London to New York — partially to escape all of the negative publicity surrounding it, but also to reinvent herself in the city’s buzzing celebrity social circle. This was a crucial component of Epstein and Maxwell’s complex relationship: She connected him to powerful figures who were then beyond his reach such as the Clintons, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew. In return, Epstein bankrolled her.

Brown believes Maxwell was in love with Epstein, but Epstein manipulated her to gratify a sexual obsession he had with underage women, which the journalist describes as “a sickness.”

“Epstein was a [sociopath] who felt he had enough power and money to be above the law,” says Brown. “And he believed he was brilliant enough to manipulate anyone to get what he wanted.”

“How much money Ghislaine Maxwell had when her father died has always been a mystery,” says Brown. “But Maxwell enjoyed the high life, and never had any real career or job, so Epstein supported her financially.

In this September 2, 2000, file photo, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, driven by Britain’s Prince Andrew leaves the wedding of a former girlfriend of the prince, Aurelia Cecil, at the Parish Church of St Michael in Compton Chamberlayne near Salisbury, England (Chris Ison/PA via AP, File)

Ghislaine Maxwell is currently charged in the United States with lying under oath and recruiting, grooming and trafficking girls to be sexually abused by Epstein from the 1990s through 2004. The 59-year-old outspoken British socialite has pleaded not guilty, and is presently being held in a New York prison awaiting trial, which is set to begin this coming November. If convicted, Maxwell could face up to 80 years in prison.

“So far, Maxwell is playing the same game with her defense [lawyers] as Epstein did: They are throwing every motion they can against these prosecutors to try to wear them down,” says Brown. “But it probably won’t work because the prosecutors that are handling [the case] this time around are much more dedicated and are not going to give up as easily.”

The best of the worst
Brown has a detailed understanding of how prosecutors can be corrupted in a high-profile case relating to sex trafficking accusations: Her newly-released book began as a three-part series of investigative articles she wrote for The Miami Herald in 2018. They exposed a secret plea deal arranged by Epstein’s lawyers, who undermined and manipulated the US criminal justice system so their client, Epstein, could get a softer prison sentence and ultimately escape federal prosecution.

Brown showed how back in 2007 Epstein was accused of assembling a cult-like network of underage girls — with the help of young female recruiters — to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, as often as three times a day.

Brown’s articles also noted how FBI and court records showed Epstein was suspected of trafficking minor girls, often from overseas, for sex parties at his other homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and the Caribbean.

This March 28, 2017 photo provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein. (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP, File)

“This dark and deep obsession that Epstein had [with underage women] was an addiction,” says Brown. “And the victims [I interviewed] told me that if they couldn’t bring him [another] girl, he would get angry at them. I imagine Epstein was doing the same thing with Ghislaine Maxwell, saying, ‘You’ve got to bring me more girls.'”

“One of the ironies of this case is that Maxwell seemed to have moved herself away from Epstein just when my series [of articles] came out,” says Brown. “But then the whole [story] resurrected itself in her life again.”

Based on a 53-page federal indictment, Epstein back in 2008 could have potentially ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life. Instead, the non-prosecution agreement Epstein’s lawyers secretly cut with federal prosecutors at the time shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes.

The deal required that Epstein plead guilty to two prostitution charges in a state court and agree to serve just 13 months in a county jail in Palm Beach, Florida. This essentially made the case that Epstein was only paying for sex, when he actually stood accused of sexually abusing minors.

“To see prosecutors, who are supposed to be advocating for victims, work so closely with Epstein’s lawyers to make this case go away was pretty surprising,” says Brown.

The journalist also exposed how Epstein’s enormous wealth and prestige afforded him extra privileges as he served his prison sentence in a Florida county jail. Brown’s book reveals how Epstein was allowed to visit his office in West Palm Beach for several hours every day. Additionally, during the hours he was inside the prison, Epstein was given access to a computer. On at least one occasion, one jail deputy saw Epstein masturbating while he watched one of his female assistants strip naked for him on Skype.

Toppling dominoes
It was not public knowledge that Epstein and four of his accomplices named in the secret plea agreement received immunity from all federal criminal charges until Brown’s explosive expose was published three years ago.

When the story broke, it led federal prosecutors in New York to open a fresh criminal investigation, which resulted in Epstein being subsequently arrested and charged in the summer of 2019. It also led to R. Alexander Acosta resigning as labor secretary in the Trump administration in July 2019. Crucially, Brown’s story explained how Acosta had helped cut the dodgy deal with Epstein’s legal team back in 2008, when he was a federal prosecutor in Miami.

 

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‘Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story,’ by Julie K. Brown. (Courtesy)

“When [president] Donald Trump nominated Alex Acosta to be his labor secretary in early 2017, I immediately recognized Acosta’s name as being the prosecutor who was responsible for the [non-prosecution] deal,” Brown says. “And I just wondered, how do [Epstein’s] victims feel about this — because Acosta was responsible for the Labor Department, which supervises human trafficking and child labor laws.”

Brown notes that Epstein’s vast fortune (then estimated to be approximately $500 million) enabled him to hire a so-called legal dream team, which included lawyers such as Kenneth Starr and Alan Dershowitz, with the necessary skills, political connections and aggressive tactics to make sure he could get immunity.

“Dershowitz has his own political connections and knows a lot of different people in the US criminal justice system,” says Brown. “But he is going to be watching Maxwell’s [forthcoming] court case closely to see who she names, and what information she really has.”

Brown’s book also points to accusations by Virginia Giuffre that subsequently surfaced in connection to the Epstein case, which allegedly link Dershowitz’s name to Epstein’s sexual pyramid scheme.

Now in her mid-30s, Giuffre is an advocate for sex trafficking victims and claims Maxwell groomed her when she was still a teenager to be a sex slave for Maxwell, Epstein, Prince Andrew, and other prominent men — including Dershowitz.

Screen capture from video of Virginia Roberts Giuffre gesturing during an interview on the BBC Panorama program aired on December 2, 2019. (BBC Panorama via AP)

This story also recently surfaced in a Netflix documentary called “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich.” It has led Dershowitz to sue Netflix over what he claims are false allegations made against him in relation to these alleged crimes.

Other high-profile political figures named in Brown’s book accused of participating in Epstein’s international sex trafficking operation include allegations against Israel’s 10th prime minister, Ehud Barak.

Brown says all the accused have the right to be innocent until proven guilty, though she stresses that given the complex history of the Epstein case and the cover-ups it involved, these allegations need to be urgently investigated.

“The FBI, the [US] federal authorities, and law enforcement authorities in Europe should all be looking at the financial and social connections Epstein had with all of these people,” says Brown. “Epstein had a whole group of people helping him to [carry out these crimes].”

“[Epstein] did not do this alone,” she says. “There were plenty of people that either knew about what Epstein was doing, or even participated in what he was doing. This was an international sex trafficking organization that was similar to an organized crime family — so it shouldn’t just end just with the prosecution of [Ghislaine Maxwell].”

 

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Something about these mfers

https://twitter.com/goptony?lang=en

 

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Another random billionaire

New Docs Confirm Billionaire Was Subject of Child Porn Probe

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

Epstein’s Final Days: Celebrity Reminiscing and a Running Toilet

 

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[NZA]