Victims of Billionaire Pedophile with Ties to Bill Clinton Claim Federal Prosecutors Offered “Sweetheart Deal”
Prosecutors went to great lengths to keep secret the non-prosecution agreement reached in 2007 with Jeffrey Epstein, attorneys for the victims allege, “because of the strong objection they would have faced from victims of Epstein’s abuse, and because of the public criticism that would have resulted from allowing a politically-connected billionaire who had sexually abused more than 30 minor girls to escape … with only a county court jail sentence.”
Before any allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced in 2005, Trump and Bill Clinton spoke glowingly of Epstein, and court records have included documents and testimony suggesting both men flew with Epstein on his private jets.
Court files document long-running ties between Epstein and the former president. Bill Clinton flew on at least six trips with Epstein and his entourage in 2002 and 2003 including to international destinations such as Paris, Bangkok and Brunei, according to logs kept by one of Epstein’s pilots.
And as Epstein first faced federal prosecution a few years later, one of his lawyers, Gerald B. Lefcourt, wrote to prosecutors to tout Epstein’s pedigree as “part of the original group that conceived of the Clinton Global Initiative,” according to a letter attached to Wednesday’s court filing.
At the heart of this week’s court filings is a deal Epstein reached with federal prosecutors in September of 2007 that spared him from a federal prosecution. After an extensive investigation by the Palm Beach police and the FBI, the Justice Department effectively immunized Epstein for multiple alleged offenses involving underage girls in exchange for his guilty pleas to two comparatively minor sex crimes in Florida state court. And Epstein’s lawyers persuaded the federal government to keep the terms of the agreement secret, according to the court filing by victims’ attorneys Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell.
On the day the deal was signed, an attorney for Epstein sent an email to the federal prosecutor handling the case which read, “Please do whatever you can to keep this from becoming public,” according to an email exchange attached to Wednesday’s filing.
If he’d been charged and convicted on the federal counts, Epstein might have spent the rest of his life in prison. Instead, he now splits his time between his permanent residence – a private island estate off the coast of St. Thomas – and homes in Paris, New Mexico and New York City, where he owns what is purported to be one of the largest single-family residences in Manhattan.
– From the ABC News article: Victims: Feds Hid ‘Sweetheart’ Deal for Sex Offender With Deep Political Ties
As I’ve said time and time again, the greatest cancer of all cancers afflicting these United States is a startling deterioration in the rule of law. Specifically, the institutionalization of a two-tier justice system in which the rich and powerful can (literally) get away with murder, while poor inner-city kids get locked up for “victimless” crimes.
One of the most egregious examples of our Banana Republic criminal justice system relates to billionaire pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. A man who was barely punished for sexually abusing and exploiting at least 30 underage children.
This is a topic I touched upon a little over a year ago in the post, Oligarch Justice – Powerful Pedophiles Roam Free as Journalist Barrett Brown Returns to Jail. Here are a few excerpts:
Bill Clinton took repeated trips on the “Lolita Express“—the private passenger jet owned by billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein—with an actress in softcore porn movies whose name appears in Epstein’s address book under an entry for “massages,” according to flight logbooks obtained by Gawker and published today for the first time. The logs also show that Clinton shared more than a dozen flights with a woman who federal prosecutors believe procured underage girls to sexually service Epstein and his friends and acted as a “potential co-conspirator” in his crimes.
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 in Florida to one count of soliciting underage girls for sex (and one count of adult solicitation), for which he served just over a year in county jail. But sprawling local, state, and federal investigations into the eccentric investor’s habit of paying teen girls for “massages”—sessions during which he would allegedly penetrate girls with sex toys, demand to be masturbated, and have intercourse—turned up a massive network of victims, including 35 female minors whom federal prosecutors believed he’d sexually abused. He has reportedly settled lawsuits from more than 30 “Jane Doe” victims since 2008; the youngest alleged victim was 12 years old at the time of her abuse.
Some of his victims are understandably furious regarding Epstein’s joke of a punishment, and in new court filings claim that prosecutors secretly negotiated a sweetheart deal to save the politically connected pedophile.
We learn the following from ABC News:
New court filings are bringing fresh attention to a Florida sex scandal that could become grist for political trouble in the 2016 Presidential campaign.
The new legal filings allege that federal prosecutors in Florida “repeatedly” and “intentionally” violated the rights of dozens of teenage sex abuse victims by secretly negotiating an “extraordinarily lenient” deal with a wealthy Palm Beach financier known in the past to have socialized with powerful business and political figures — including former President Bill Clinton and current GOP front-runner Donald Trump.
Prosecutors went to great lengths to keep secret the non-prosecution agreement reached in 2007 with Jeffrey Epstein, attorneys for the victims allege, “because of the strong objection they would have faced from victims of Epstein’s abuse, and because of the public criticism that would have resulted from allowing a politically-connected billionaire who had sexually abused more than 30 minor girls to escape … with only a county court jail sentence.”
Throughout the negotiations — and for nearly a year after the agreement was signed — the victims were kept in the dark, their attorneys said, strung along as government lawyers promised victims they were still investigating even long after they had cut Epstein an “indulgent” deal.
But with his victims back in court to challenge the government’s handling of the case, there is new attention on Epstein’s ties to two men who find themselves facing the glare of a presidential campaign — Bill Clinton, husband of Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, and Trump, who is currently leading the GOP primary race.
Before any allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced in 2005, Trump and Bill Clinton spoke glowingly of Epstein, and court records have included documents and testimony suggesting both men flew with Epstein on his private jets.
Court files document long-running ties between Epstein and the former president. Bill Clinton flew on at least six trips with Epstein and his entourage in 2002 and 2003 including to international destinations such as Paris, Bangkok and Brunei, according to logs kept by one of Epstein’s pilots.
And as Epstein first faced federal prosecution a few years later, one of his lawyers, Gerald B. Lefcourt, wrote to prosecutors to tout Epstein’s pedigree as “part of the original group that conceived of the Clinton Global Initiative,” according to a letter attached to Wednesday’s court filing.
Reached Wednesday, Lefcourt said he would not have made that representation to the prosecutors had he not believed it was true. Representatives for both the Clinton Global Initiative and the former President did not immediately respond to ABC News’ requests for comment. According to the organization’s website, CGI was formed in 2005 by former President Clinton “after a lifetime of attending meetings where issues were discussed but no action was taken.”
Whether Trump invokes the scandal in an attempt to spur questions about Clinton’s association with Epstein may depend on his own history with the wealthy investor. In a New York Magazine article in 2002, Trump boasted of his friendship with Epstein: “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen 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. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life,” he told the magazine.
At the heart of this week’s court filings is a deal Epstein reached with federal prosecutors in September of 2007 that spared him from a federal prosecution. After an extensive investigation by the Palm Beach police and the FBI, the Justice Department effectively immunized Epstein for multiple alleged offenses involving underage girls in exchange for his guilty pleas to two comparatively minor sex crimes in Florida state court. And Epstein’s lawyers persuaded the federal government to keep the terms of the agreement secret, according to the court filing by victims’ attorneys Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell.
On the day the deal was signed, an attorney for Epstein sent an email to the federal prosecutor handling the case which read, “Please do whatever you can to keep this from becoming public,” according to an email exchange attached to Wednesday’s filing.
Read those two paragraphs over and over and over again. This is Banana Republic justice.
Hundreds of pages of newly-disclosed correspondence between federal prosecutors and Epstein’s dream team of defense lawyers, including Jay Lefkowitz, Kenneth Starr, Alan Dershowitz, Roy Black, and Lefcourt, provide an inside look at Epstein’s efforts to forestall the federal prosecution and at the effort to conceal the resulting deal, despite repeated acknowledgements by government lawyers that they were legally required to inform the victims.
Disturbingly, Alan Dershowitz also had personal ties to Epstein. See the following from the post, Oligarch Justice – Powerful Pedophiles Roam Free as Journalist Barrett Brown Returns to Jail:
Epstein’s predatory past, and his now-inconvenient relationships with a Who’s Who of the Davos set, hit the front pages again earlier this month when one of his victims, Virginia Roberts, claimed in a federal court filing that Epstein recruited her as a “sex slave” at the age of 15 and “sexually trafficked [her] to politically-connected and financially-powerful people,” including Prince Andrew and attorney Alan Dershowitz. (The latter, the filing claimed, had sex with the victim “on private planes”; Dershowitz vigorously denies the charges, as does Prince Andrew.)
Other prominent figures whose names appear in the logs, which document globe-spanning flights on Epstein’s planes during various periods from 1997 to 2005, include Dershowitz, former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president Larry Summers, Naomi Campbell, and scientist Stephen Pinker.
The logs also cast doubt on public statements made by Dershowitz, who has been vigorously downplaying his relationship with Epstein since Roberts levied her accusations against him. Dershowitz has attempted to paint himself as a mere passing acquaintance of Epstein, suggesting to the American Lawyer last week that he only began hanging around the billionaire to fundraise for his school, Harvard.
Now back to the ABC News story…
“In a feature article about Mr. Epstein in New York Magazine,” Lefcourt wrote in a letter to prosecutors, “former President Clinton aptly described Mr. Epstein as ‘a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first century science.’President Clinton reached this conclusion during a month-long trip to Africa with Mr. Epstein, which Mr. Epstein hosted. The purpose of that trip was to increase AIDS awareness; to work towards a solution to the AIDS crisis; and to provide funding to reduce the costs of delivering medications to those inflicted (sic) with the disease.”
Epstein entered his guilty pleas in June of 2008 to one count of solicitation of a prostitute and one count of solicitation of a prostitute who is a minor. He served 13 months in a private wing of the Palm Beach County stockade with liberal work-release privileges that allowed him to spend up to sixteen hours a day at his office. He is also required to register as a sex offender in any state where he has a home.
If he’d been charged and convicted on the federal counts, Epstein might have spent the rest of his life in prison. Instead, he now splits his time between his permanent residence – a private island estate off the coast of St. Thomas – and homes in Paris, New Mexico and New York City, where he owns what is purported to be one of the largest single-family residences in Manhattan.
Two of Epstein’s alleged victims, then 14-year-old girls now identified in court documents as Jane Does 1 and 2, filed suit in 2008 accusing the government of violating the federal law which guarantees crime victims the right to confer with prosecutors and to be treated fairly by the justice system. Wednesday’s filing in the case seeks a ruling from the judge that their rights – and those of all the alleged Epstein victims identified in the federal investigation – were indeed violated by the government. Their ultimate goal is the invalidation of Epstein’s “sweetheart plea deal.”
“Despite the fact that this case has been in litigation for more than seven years spanning several hundred pleadings,” write the victims’ attorneys, “the Government does not write even a single sentence explaining why it entered into [a deal] with a sex offender who had committed hundreds of federal sex offenses against young girls. Perhaps there is some reason for this extraordinary leniency. But if so, the Government has yet to offer it.”
I’ll let readers come to their own conclusions.
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