Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital
Serious questions have recently been asked about 1) is he really a billionaire and 2) if so, or if not, where did he really get his money?bilateralrope wrote: ↑2019-07-15 12:16am Plus we are talking about a Billionaire here. Is he going to try blackmailing people for something that he could just buy ?
This is going to be fun to watch.Knife wrote: ↑2019-07-15 12:23amSerious questions have recently been asked about 1) is he really a billionaire and 2) if so, or if not, where did he really get his money?bilateralrope wrote: ↑2019-07-15 12:16am Plus we are talking about a Billionaire here. Is he going to try blackmailing people for something that he could just buy ?
All new avenues for prosecution, I might add.
Bribes can be reported and get the briber in trouble, while the bribie, gets away scott-free.bilateralrope wrote: ↑2019-07-15 12:16am Plus we are talking about a Billionaire here. Is he going to try blackmailing people for something that he could just buy ?
Christ. This is some scary shit. A lot of it is speculative, but if even a fraction of it is true, then it means that this man built a fortune, possibly in the billions, by trafficking underage girls to the wealthy and powerful and then blackmailing his clients. This is the kind of story that shouldn't appear outside of particularly kooky conspiracy sites and particularly trashy thrillers.The Jeffrey Epstein case is an asteroid poised to strike the elite world in which he moved. No one can yet say precisely how large it is. But as the number of women who’ve accused the financier (at least, that’s what he claimed to be) of sexual assault grows to grotesque levels—there are said to be more than 50 women who are potential victims—a wave of panic is rippling through Manhattan, DC, and Palm Beach, as Epstein’s former friends and associates rush to distance themselves, while gossiping about who might be ensnared. Donald Trump’s labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, architect of the original 2007 non-prosecution agreement that let Epstein off with a wrist slap, has already been forced to resign.
The questions about Epstein are metastasizing much faster than they can be answered: Who knew what about Epstein’s alleged abuse? How, and from whom, did Epstein get his supposed $500 million fortune? Why did Acosta grant Epstein an outrageously lenient non-prosecution agreement? (And what does it mean that Acosta was reportedly told Epstein “belonged to intelligence”?) But among the most pressing queries is which other famous people might be exposed for committing sex crimes. “There were other business associates of Mr. Epstein’s who engaged in improper sexual misconduct at one or more of his homes. We do know that,” said Brad Edwards, a lawyer for Courtney Wild, one of the Epstein accusers who gave emotional testimony at Epstein’s bail hearing. “In due time the names are going to start coming out.” (Attorneys for Epstein did not respond to a request for comment.)
Likely within days, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will release almost 2,000 pages of documents that could reveal sexual abuse by “numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known prime minister, and other world leaders,” according to the three-judge panel's ruling. The documents were filed during a civil defamation lawsuit brought by Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a former Mar-a-Lago locker-room attendant, against Epstein’s former girlfriend and alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell. “Nobody who was around Epstein a lot is going to have an easy time now. It’s all going to come out,” said Giuffre’s lawyer David Boies. Another person involved with litigation against Epstein told me: “It’s going to be staggering, the amount of names. It’s going to be contagion numbers.”
Epstein remained a fixture in elite circles even after he was a registered sex offender. A few years ago, for example, he was a guest at a dinner in Palo Alto hosted by LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman for the MIT neuroscientist Ed Boyden. At the dinner, Elon Musk introduced Epstein to Mark Zuckerberg. (“Mark met Epstein in passing one time at a dinner honoring scientists that was not organized by Epstein,” Zuckerberg spokesman Ben LaBolt told me. “Mark did not communicate with Epstein again following the dinner.” Musk did not respond to a request for comment.)
One source who’s done business with Epstein told me that Epstein’s 21,000-square-foot townhouse on East 71st Street welcomed a steady stream of the Davos crowd in the past decade. The source said Bill Gates, Larry Summers, and Steve Bannon visited the house, which has been called one of the largest private residences in Manhattan. “Jeffrey collected people. That’s what he did,” the source said. Gates and Summers did not respond to requests for comment.
Thus far, the name most publicly associated with Epstein’s alleged crimes is famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who’s been waging a public battle with David Boies for years. In April, Boies’s client Giuffre sued Dershowitz for defamation after Dershowitz called her a liar (a strategy similar to that of seven of Bill Cosby’s accusers). In the days since the FBI arrested Epstein at Teterboro Airport a week and a half ago, Dershowitz has been going on television and dialing up friends and reporters to profess his innocence and label Giuffre and Boies liars. “I want everything to come out! I’m not afraid of anything because I did nothing wrong,” Dershowitz told me on the afternoon of July 15.
He called me a minute after I had emailed him for comment. He said he’d been friends with Epstein since 1996, when they were introduced at a party on Martha’s Vineyard by Lynn Forester de Rothschild. “She begged me to meet him. She told me, ‘here’s this smart academic.’” A few days later, Epstein invited Dershowitz to Les Wexner’s 59th birthday party at Wexner’s mansion in New Albany, Ohio. “It’s a tradition that Jeff invited the smartest person he met that year. He told them I was the smartest.” They remained close for years. Dershowitz strenuously denied ever participating in Epstein’s underage sex ring and said he’d only been in Epstein’s presence with his wife. “I got one massage!” he told me. “It was from a 50-year-old Russian woman named Olga. And I kept my shorts on. I didn’t even like it. I’m not a massage guy.”
Dershowitz said he secretly (and legally) tape-recorded settlement conversations with Boies and that the phone calls capture Boies admitting that Giuffre’s allegations aren’t true. “Boies is a bad person,” he told me.
“I never said that,” Boies responded when I asked about Dershowitz’s version of the phone calls. “What Alan does is he plays a second or two out of context; he never lets anybody listen to the whole thing.” Boies also dismissed Dershowitz’s claim that he never met Giuffre at Epstein’s house. According to Boies, Epstein’s former employees said in sworn depositions that they saw Dershowitz at the house multiple times without his wife. “This Olga woman doesn’t exist. Epstein’s barely kept women around who were over 25. It’s a figment of Alan’s imagination,” Boies said.
On Wall Street, Epstein is a subject of mystery—and fear. “I knew Jeff. He came across as very smart, very sophisticated,” one hedge fund manager told me. “He always had a good read on people. But manipulative people are good at that.” Another person who’s been in meetings with Epstein told me: “He’s very clever.”
How Epstein obtained his fortune is a matter of feverish speculation. His claim to a billionaire-only client list now seems laughable to the bankers I spoke with. One Wall Street source with direct knowledge of Epstein’s business said one source of Epstein’s income was providing “tax advice and estate planning” to rich clients, presumably because Epstein had experience with offshore funds after basing his office in the Virgin Islands. According to the source, Apollo Global Management founder Leon Black and Epstein got into a disagreement over Epstein’s fee. “There was a back-and-forth,” the source said. In 2015 they agreed Black would make a $10 million donation to Epstein’s foundation. (Black declined to comment.)
In the absence of much other information, the reigning theory on Wall Street currently is that Epstein’s activities with women and girls were central to the building of his fortune, and his relations with some of his investors essentially amounted to blackmail.
Similarly, DC is on edge. “Epstein bragged about his contacts in Washington,” Boies said. Reporters are likely to dig into why the Justice Department decided not to prosecute Epstein and kept the deal secret from his victims. One theory circulating among prominent Republicans is that Epstein was a Mossad agent. Another is that the George W. Bush White House directed Acosta not to prosecute Epstein to protect Prince Andrew on behalf of the British government, then the U.S.’s closest ally in the Iraq war. “The royal family did everything they could to try and discredit the Prince Andrew stuff,” Boies told me. “When we tried to follow up with anything, we were stonewalled. We wanted to interview him, they were unwilling to do anything.” (Prince Andrew could not be reached for comment).
Of course, the two Epstein friends that people are most curious about are Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, both of whom have denied anything untoward. During the 2016 presidential race, Hillary Clinton’s campaign consulted Bill’s post–White House Secret Service logs because they were worried Trump would bring up Bill’s close association with Epstein and wanted to get ahead of the story, a source told me.
For those in Epstein’s orbit, the stakes of exposure are bound to get higher as more and more women come forward. Every day seems to bring new horrors about Epstein’s alleged depravity. At a press conference on Tuesday, Courtney Wild’s lawyer Brad Edwards said that after interviewing dozens of Epstein’s accusers, it appeared Epstein spent almost all of his time abusing underage girls. “It was his full-time job,” Edwards said. “We have not found anyone who has provided information about a legitimate business he was engaged [in].”
A new report from the New York Times on Tuesday revealed new details about the years-long friendship between President Donald Trump and the convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The most bizarre revelation was the account of a party, told by Florida businessman George Houraney, at which Trump and Epstein were the only guests:
It was supposed to be an exclusive party at Mar-a-Lago, Donald J. Trump’s members-only club in Palm Beach, Fla. But other than the two dozen or so women flown in to provide the entertainment, the only guests were Mr. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.
The year was 1992 and the event was a “calendar girl” competition, something that George Houraney, a Florida-based businessman who ran American Dream Enterprise, had organized at Mr. Trump’s request.
“I arranged to have some contestants fly in,” Mr. Houraney recalled in an interview on Monday. “At the very first party, I said, ‘Who’s coming tonight? I have 28 girls coming.’ It was him and Epstein.”
The report contains no allegations of misconduct at the party, but it’s a disturbing account given that Epstein has just been indicted on charges of sex trafficking young teenage girls. (Houraney and his girlfriend Jill Harth have accused Trump of sexual abuse of Harth).
Some of Trump’s public comments suggest that he was aware at the time of Epstein’s interest in having sex with underage girls. The Times report also indicates that during the 2016 campaign, Trump believed he could use Epstein’s ties to Bill Clinton to damage Hillary Clinton. It even indicates that David Pecker of The National Enquirer suggested he had damaging information about Clinton and Epstein, though it never became a major issue in the race.
On Tuesday in the Oval Office, Trump downplayed his relationship to Epstein. He said he knew him “like everybody else in Palm Beach knew him … he was a fixture in Palm Beach.” But the Times reported that they were details a much closer relationship than those remarks suggest. In fact, they were reportedly involved together in a business venture, and when it fell apart, their relationship soured.
The first thought that comes to my mind is that claiming that Epstein is involved with an intelligence agency seems a way for someone he is blackmailing to convince someone else to go along with Epstein's plans.And what does it mean that Acosta was reportedly told Epstein “belonged to intelligence”?
Anyway, his bail hearing is set for later today. I'd like to think that there's no possible way he could get out on bail, but he is a rich, well-connected white man in America, so... fingers crossed.Jeffrey Epstein used a foreign passport with a fake name to enter several countries in the 1980s including the United Kingdom, Spain and Saudi Arabia, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
The questionable travel document was found inside a safe — along with $70,000 in cash and 48 loose diamonds — in the New York City home of the wealthy financier and accused sex trafficker. It contained a photo of Epstein with a different name and listed his place of residence as Saudi Arabia, according to prosecutors.
Epstein's lawyers filed court papers Tuesday claiming he obtained the Austrian passport in 1982 for "personal protection" to be presented to "potential kidnappers, hijackers, or terrorists." The lawyers said Epstein's Jewish faith and substantial wealth made him a target while traveling in the Middle East.
Epstein's attorneys also said that the government provided no evidence that he ever used the passport.
But Wednesday, prosecutors did just that.
"In fact, the passport contains numerous ingress and egress stamps, including stamps that reflect use of the passport to enter France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia in the 1980s," the court papers say.
Prosecutors added that Epstein's lawyers have yet to explain some of the basic questions concerning the passport, including how he obtained it and whether he's a citizen of another country.
Epstein's lawyers did not immediately return a request for comment.
The travel document has become a key component of the government's argument for keeping Epstein locked up on charges alleging he sexually abused dozens of underage girls in New York and Florida between 2002 and 2005.
Prosecutors say it demonstrates Epstein's ability to obtain false travel documents and underscores his "serious risk of flight." They also point to his extraordinary wealth, access to private planes and limited family ties.
Defense lawyers have asked the judge to allow Epstein to remain at his $77 million Manhattan mansion with electronic monitoring as the case plays out.
A judge is expected to issue a ruling on the bail request Thursday.
Epstein, who is being held at a federal prison in New York City, faces up to 45 years in prison if convicted on charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy.
Washington Post wrote: NEW YORK — Multimillionaire and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein will remain jailed while he awaits trial on new allegations that he sexually abused children, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman announced the decision at a hearing, siding with prosecutors after they and defense attorneys traded arguments for more than a week about whether Epstein could be released to some sort of home confinement.
“I find that the government has established danger to others and to the community by clear and convincing evidence,” Berman said.
The judge cited as reasons for his decision evidence the Epstein had missed required sex-offender check-ins, the “sexually explicit photos” investigators recovered at Epstein’s home after his arrest and the “compelling” testimony of two women who allege Epstein abused them as children.
The women, Annie Farmer and Courtney Wild, had earlier this week urged the judge to keep Epstein locked up.
Berman also pointed to an expired foreign passport with Epstein’s picture but someone else’s name that investigators found in a safe in his home. He said defense attorneys’ offer to have Epstein remain on home confinement, with several other conditions, was “inadequate.”
“I doubt that any bail package can overcome danger to the community,” Berman said, adding that he will post a written decision on the matter Thursday afternoon.
Epstein, 66, was arrested on July 6 after landing at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport and charged with sex trafficking dozens of girls from 2002 to 2005. The case drew significant attention because in 2008, the jet-setting financier was able to resolve similar allegations by pleading guilty to just two state charges. He spent about 13 months in jail, with work release privileges, as part of the agreement.
The deal, which has been criticized as overly lenient, was approved by Alex Acosta, the former U.S. attorney in Miami whom President Trump picked as his labor secretary. Acosta resigned from the Labor Department post after the new charges were brought, drawing more attention to his handling of the previous case.
Epstein has pleaded not guilty to the new charges, which his attorneys have asserted are effectively an improper do-over of the old case. If Epstein had been granted bail, defense attorneys said, he would have been willing to put up his $77 million Manhattan mansion as collateral and agree to home confinement with 24/7 security that he would have funded.
Prosecutors argued even that would not guarantee Epstein would keep showing up for court. By their telling, Epstein is an impenitent sexual abuser of children who has in the past sought to obstruct inquiries into his misdeeds and has virtually limitless means to escape justice.
Epstein, who financial records show is worth more than $500 million, is a frequent world traveler with access to two private jets, prosecutors said. In one safe seized from his Manhattan mansion, prosecutors seized more than $70,000 in cash, 48 loose diamond stones as big as 2.38 carats and a large diamond ring.
Prosecutors also pointed in recent filings and hearings to the expired passport. The document, they said, is evidence that Epstein “knows how to obtain false travel documents and/or assume other, foreign identities.” And there is evidence that someone used it: Prosecutors said in a court filing Wednesday that the document “contains numerous ingress and egress stamps, including stamps that reflect use of the passport to enter France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia in the 1980s.”
Epstein’s attorneys wrote in a court filing Tuesday that the passport, from Austria, expired 32 years ago and asserted it was for Epstein’s own safety.
They asserted that “Epstein — an affluent member of the Jewish faith — acquired the passport in the 1980s, when hijackings were prevalent, in connection to Middle East travel.”
“The passport was for personal protection in the event of travel to dangerous areas, only to be presented to potential kidnappers, hijackers or terrorists should violent episodes occur,” they wrote.
On Thursday morning, Epstein’s defense team wrote that he “never used the document to travel internationally and never presented it to any immigration or customs authority.” The stamps, they wrote, predated when Epstein received the document and “do not reflect Mr. Epstein’s entries or exits.”
They dismissed concerns about his foreign travel, asserting that, even as many were “clamoring for his re-prosecution” after news reports on his 2008 deal, he traveled extensively and “invariably returned to the United States.”
Epstein will be held in the federal detention center in Manhattan.
I mean, it would also be nice if the sitting PotUS turned out not to be a child molester. But given that he probably is one, I'd like to see him brought to justice for it.Solauren wrote: ↑2019-07-18 01:51pm I know this is going to sound odd to say, but I actually hope Trump has no connection to Epsteins sex trafficking and related activities.
That would give him reason to interfer with the investigation, and potientally slow it down, and give Epsteins other clients time to disappear.
There's already a deep strain of pedophilia running through the Alt. Reich (and much of our society, frankly). This is definitely a case where Trump is a symptom, not a cause.
We'll see. Rich, powerful rapists have gone to prison before. I'm less concerned about Epstein getting a slap on the wrist than I am about him being made the fall guy for all his other friends.Highlord Laan wrote: ↑2019-07-20 11:46pm Too bad he's going to walk. Far too many powerful friends for justice to actually be done, sadly.
He'll be let off with something light, the whole situation will be swept under the rug, and things will return to what the powers the be desire to be the status quo.
Any hope for otherwise is blind, stupid optimism
God Damn, Giuliani's ability to consistently say things that make his client look guilty is impressive. I'm not sure whether this is him trying to take Trump's "throw out contradictory bullshit to obfuscate things" tactics to new levels, or just senility.If the Mueller probe taught the world one thing, it’s that anyone professionally associated with Rudy Giuliani should demand a clause in his contract barring him from speaking publicly on their behalf. Last year, for example, in a series of interviews that made his unhinged rant against ferrets look sane, Giuliani suggested that Donald Trump fired James Comey in order to obstruct his investigations; that the president had colluded with Russia but that doing so wasn’t a crime; and that attorneys at his law firm regularly took it upon themselves to pay off porn stars alleging affairs with their clients—to say nothing of cringeworthy fantasies he offered up about riding to Ivanka Trump’s rescue. Now that the Russia matter has mostly concluded—save for testimony by Robert Mueller that could potentially change the impeachment calculus—Giuliani has been forced to find new ways to stick both feet in his mouth. On Monday, he found one!
Appearing on Hill.TV, the former New York City mayor told the hosts of “Rising” that the fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case is “obviously going to implicate a lot of people—I can’t tell you who but it’s not going to end up with just Jeffrey Epstein.“ While that is certainly the consensus—reporter Nick Bryant, who obtained Epstein’s “black book,” said in an interview with Vanity Fair that the scandal will “go all the way up to Mount Olympus”—one person you could say is definitely implicated in the scandal is Giuliani’s own client, Donald Trump. The same Donald Trump who hosted a “calendar girl” party at Mar-a-Lago in 1992, the guest list for which consisted of him, Epstein, and “28 girls.” It is also the same Donald Trump who was videotaped dancing and joking with Epstein at another party at Mar-a-Lago, surrounded by young cheerleaders for the Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins. In fact, Trump remained on extremely friendly terms with Epstein for at least another decade, telling New York in 2002 that Epstein was a “terrific guy” and “a lot of fun to be with,” adding, “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Six years later, Epstein would be convicted of sex crimes by a Florida state court.
Yet, weirdly, Giuliani did not mention Trump while discussing the powerful people likely to go down as a result of the new charges against Epstein, which the “financier” has denied. Nor did he mention fellow Trump defender and longtime Epstein pal Alan Dershowitz, who’s denied ever taking part in Epstein’s underage sex ring. (“I got one massage!” Dershowitz told my colleague Gabriel Sherman. “It was from a 50-year-old Russian woman named Olga. And I kept my shorts on. I didn’t even like it. I’m not a massage guy.”)
Elsewhere in the Hill.TV interview, ole Rudes contended that anyone who spent a considerable amount of time with Epstein—like, say, Trump—more than likely knew that crimes were being committed. “If you spent this much time with him and he was so involved with these underaged girls—who did you see him with and what was he doing and what did he tell you and what did he say to you and how could you have missed it,” he said. “Maybe some were innocent—maybe some weren’t, but I think they’re going to investigate everybody.”
In related news, the Daily Mail reported Monday that shortly after serving out his extremely light prison sentence on prostitution charges—during which he allegedly continued to engage in “improper sexual contact,” claims his lawyer denies—Epstein partied with a veritable who’s who of Trump administration employees and friends, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and…Rudy Giuliani.
I mean, if he really wanted to do that, he could just go to the press or the FBI.
