Epstein Barr

[Howl]

I've been thinking about starting a new thread about sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, corrupt A.G. Bill Barr and Trump, because, as noted in another post, they are all tied together.

Bill Barr testified during his Senate confirmation hearing that he would recuse himself from anything related to Epstein.  Now, he claims that he's consulted DoJ ethics lawyers and has decided not to recuse himself.  Notably, he didn't share what those ethics lawyers actually advised, just that he wouldn't recuse. 

Not much question anymore that Barr was put in place as A.G. to protect Trump and further his agenda, but let's review the primary conflicts of interest.

First, Donald Barr, Bill Barr's father, headmaster at the exclusive Dalton prep school in NYC, hired a 20-year-old Epsein (with no college degree) to teach at Dalton School.  This would have been a target-rich environment for Epstein, who I speculate was already on his way to becoming an accomplished sexual predator.  There's no background on how Epstein came to apply to teach at Dalton, but he taught math and physics. 

Second, Bill Barr's prior law firm handled the original Epstein case in Florida. 

As most know by now, Epstein got the sweetheart deal of the century in Florida, which also protected others.  Someone on twitter noted today that possibly the Epstein deal was lenient because these girls were considered prostitutes rather than underaged victims.  That plea deal also protected others who were implicated by sealing their identities. 

There are filings right now under consideration as to whether the original plea deal can be vacated.  

Note that the Public Corruption Unit is involved in the current charges. 

Trump has been the Teflon Don until now, but I feel certain that there could be bombshell evidence that Trump was implicated in the original case and in this current one as well,  and that Barr will do everything in his power to protect Trump. 

A huge shout out to Julie K. Brown, an investigative reporter with the Miami Herald who did a blockbuster three-part series that ripped the Epstein case back open. 

And one more thing: Epstein's long-time ex-consort and possible procurer is a woman named Ghislaine Maxwell, whose father was a corrupt British politician (who may have been murdered on his yacht) with murky ties to bad people in Eastern Europe and possibly Russian oligarchs. 

 

 

Edited July 10, 2019 by Howl

[Dreadcrumbs]

Heh. Epstein Barr. Epstein-Barr.

Could I get some sources (aside from the Miami Herald stuff)?

Not doubting you, I'd like more reading.

[Howl]

just google "Jeffrey Epstein" 

This story is being covered in depth by every major news outlet.  Miami Herald, WaPo, and New York Times are behind paywalls, but The Atlantic, Newsweek, The Daily Beast all have excellent reporting.  If I come across anything that sheds more light, I'll post here. 

[apple1]

I agree with everything in the opening post.

And I LOVE LOVE the thread title.

[formergothardite]

23 minutes ago, Howl said:

Trump has been the Teflon Don until now, but I feel certain that there could be bombshell evidence that Trump was implicated in the original case and in this current one as well,  and that Barr will do everything in his power to protect Trump

It has been my belief that there is hard evidence tying Trump(and lots of other powerful men) to this child sex ring. I also think that while they were easily able to cover everything up last time and Barr is working overtime to protect Trump this time, that it will be a lot harder to get away with this now. Who knows what sort of evidence they found and I have a feeling that if Epstein goes down he is taking everyone with him. Men like that aren't going to prison without taking down the men who he expected to protect him. 

This could very well be the beginning of the end for a lot of very powerful men. 

[apple1]

7 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

This could very well be the beginning of the end for a lot of very powerful men. 

I sure hope you are right. (I'm having a depressed, pessimistic day today).

[thoughtful]

This may be the best thread title ever. Just thinking about these viruses masquerading as men makes me so, so weary.

[Dreadcrumbs]

58 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

It has been my belief that there is hard evidence tying Trump(and lots of other powerful men) to this child sex ring. I also think that while they were easily able to cover everything up last time and Barr is working overtime to protect Trump this time, that it will be a lot harder to get away with this now. Who knows what sort of evidence they found and I have a feeling that if Epstein goes down he is taking everyone with him. Men like that aren't going to prison without taking down the men who he expected to protect him. 

This could very well be the beginning of the end for a lot of very powerful men. 

My hope is that if this of all things takes Trump down, Pence goes down too.

[formergothardite]

12 minutes ago, Dreadcrumbs said:

My hope is that if this of all things takes Trump down, Pence goes down too.

What gives me hope is that Trump is nothing if not vindictive, if he goes down he would rather die than let Pence get the power. Pence has been playing the mud with Trump for years now, Trump will release the dirt on him. 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a good thread:

The thread includes this info about the orange toxic megacolon (under spoiler because it's disgusting):

Spoiler

 

[fraurosena]

I found this video of Virginia Roberts, who is mentioned in @GreyhoundFan's post above. A warning before watching: the content is quite disturbing and could be triggering for some.

@Dreadcrumbs, this NYT article is a good read if you want to know more about Epstein. 

Who Is Jeffrey Epstein? An Opulent Life, Celebrity Friends and Lurid Accusations

Quote

For years, Jeffrey Epstein lived a luxurious life, socializing with celebrities, jetting off to Europe, California or the Caribbean, where he owned a private island.

In New York, where he lived in one of the largest private houses in Manhattan, his name turned up in gossip columns from time to time, linked to presidents and princes. But he largely stayed out of the spotlight, almost never talking to reporters.

He remained an enigma, a mysterious money manager who even managed to keep any client list private.

Now Mr. Epstein, 66, is at the center of a case involving sex-trafficking and conspiracy charges. He was charged on Monday with bringing girls as young as 14 to his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Fla., for sex. He is also accused of paying some of them to recruit other girls, also underage. Mr. Epstein pleaded not guilty.

He was indicted by a federal grand jury in New York more than a decade after the top federal prosecutor in Miami — Alexander Acosta, now President Trump’s labor secretary — signed off on a plea deal involving similar allegations that was kept secret from his accusers until it had been finalized in court.

It spared Mr. Epstein from a trial and possible long sentence in federal prison. Instead, he served 13 months on state charges of soliciting prostitution in Florida. But he was allowed to leave the jail six days a week to go to an office and work.

Since then, The Miami Herald has run a series of articles about Mr. Epstein’s case, and the Justice Department has faced criticism of the plea deal as another instance of a well-connected man sidestepping a reckoning. The prosecutors in Manhattan who brought the new charges against Mr. Epstein made it clear that the 2008 deal in Florida did not apply.

“The agreement, by its terms, only binds the Southern District of Florida,” Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said on Monday.

The indictment marked the downfall of a man who had, until then, been dogged for years by allegations that he lured girls and young women into disturbing sexual encounters but seemed to have escaped serious consequences.

He was a noticeable presence at Manhattan parties and movie screenings: Where other men wore jackets and ties, he wore what he always wore — a polo-style shirt, open at the collar, and jeans.

People who have met Mr. Epstein describe him as charming, chatty, disarming and funny. New York magazine said in 2002 that he brought “a trophy-hunter’s zeal to his collection of scientists and politicians.”

In 2015, when the now-defunct site Gawker published what it said was his address book, there were entries for three Trumps (Donald, his ex-wife Ivana and their daughter Ivanka); Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor; the actors Alec Baldwin and Dustin Hoffman; the singer and songwriter Jimmy Buffett (whose name was misspelled); and the Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, among many others.

He turned up in the gossip columns but lived “a life full of question marks,” as New York magazine put it in 2002. More than one writer likened Mr. Epstein to Jay Gatsby, the enduringly impenetrable F. Scott Fitzgerald character. He was said to look a little like the designer Ralph Lauren, who was born in the Bronx.

But Mr. Epstein came from Brooklyn. His father was a city Parks Department employee. Mr. Epstein took classes in physics at The Cooper Union in the mid-1970s and later attended New York University, but did not receive a degree from either school, New York magazine reported.

He began his career as a math teacher at the Dalton School, an elite private school in Manhattan whose alumni include the cable-news anchor Anderson Cooper, the comedian Chevy Chase and the actress Claire Danes.

“By most accounts, he was something of a Robin Williams-in-“Dead Poets Society” type of figure, wowing his high-school classes with passionate mathematical riffs,” according to the New York magazine article.

From there he took his math skills to Bear Stearns, then a powerful Wall Street investment bank.

Both New York magazine and Vanity Fair magazine reported that he made connections at Dalton that led him to Alan C. Greenberg, then the dauntless chief executive of the Wall Street firm Bear Stearns. Known as “Ace,” Mr. Greenberg was later the firm’s chairman and the chairman of its executive committee.

Under Mr. Greenberg and another top executive, James Cayne, Mr. Epstein “did well enough to become a limited partner — a rung beneath full partner,” Vanity Fair reported.

He left in the early 1980s, forming a consulting firm called the International Assets Group that he ran out of his apartment, according to Vanity Fair. Later he set up a money management firm called J. Epstein & Co. It eventually became the Financial Trust Company, based in the Virgin Islands.

But there were expensive footnotes about him and Bear Stearns. When two big Bear Stearns hedge funds collapsed in 2007 at the start of the financial crisis, Mr. Epstein’s firm was one of the bigger losers, out more than $50 million. Mr. Epstein’s firm also claimed in a lawsuit that he lost even more money when Bear Stearns itself collapsed in 2008.

Exactly what his money management operation did was cloaked in secrecy, as were most of the names of whomever he did it for. He claimed to work for a number of billionaires, but the only known major client was Leslie Wexner, the billionaire founder of several retail chains, including The Limited.

Mr. Wexner is the chief executive of L Brands, which now operates Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works. Mr. Epstein also did work for Steven Hoffenberg, a financier who offered to rescue The New York Post in 1994, the year before he was charged with securities fraud.

Mr. Epstein’s townhouse was once owned by a company that he and Mr. Wexner both controlled. In 2011, it was transferred to a Virgin Island-based company called Maple Inc., of which Mr. Epstein is the president.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Wexner said the retail magnate had “severed ties” with Mr. Epstein about a decade ago. Calls to Financial Trust’s office in St. Thomas and to a lawyer for Mr. Epstein there have not been returned.

Over the weekend, investigators smashed the tall wooden front doors of Mr. Epstein’s $56 million Manhattan townhouse in a raid, and said they found a safe with lewd photographs. In arguing that his wealth and private jets made him a flight risk, they said he had six residences.

They also emphasized his private island in describing his primary residence on Little St. James Island, in the Virgin Islands. They said he had a second home on the islands, along with places in New Mexico — a ranch he reportedly named “Zorro” — and Paris.

They also described a fleet that included S.U.V.s and a Mercedes-Benz sedan. His New York State sex-offender listing, required after his deal in Florida in 2008, said he also had a 2017 Bentley.

There was no mention of the Boeing 727 — decorated with mink and sable throws — that flew him to Africa with former President Bill Clinton and the actor Kevin Spacey in 2002. It also flew Mr. Epstein and other acquaintances to a TED Talk in California with lunch catered by Le Cirque, a Manhattan restaurant with a celebrity clientele.

President Clinton “knows nothing about the terrible crimes” that Mr. Epstein was charged with in New York or pleaded guilty to in Florida in 2008, a spokesman for the former president said on Monday. The spokesman, Angel Ureña, said that Mr. Clinton had taken four trips on Mr. Epstein’s plane in 2002 and 2003 — one to Europe, one to Asia and two to Africa.

Mr. Ureña emphasized that Mr. Clinton was accompanied by staff members and supporters of Mr. Clinton’s foundation “on every leg of every trip” and was accompanied by someone from his staff and his security detail when he made “one brief visit” to Mr. Epstein’s home. That was around the same time as a meeting in Mr. Clinton’s office in Harlem in 2002, Mr. Ureña said.

“He’s not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade, and has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico or his residence in Florida,” Mr. Ureña said.

Not everyone who flew on Mr. Epstein’s planes was a boldface name. Models “have been heard saying they are full of gratitude to Epstein for flying them around, and he is a familiar face to many of the Victoria’s Secret girls,” Vanity Fair said in 2003 after noting, “Epstein is known about town as a man who loves women — lots of them, mostly young.”

While Mr. Epstein may have enjoyed proximity to power, he made relatively modest political contributions, according to Federal Election Commission records.

He donated at least $188,126 to federal candidates between 1987 and 2005, most of it to Democrats, peaking around Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the United States Senate in 2000. He gave $40,000 to groups supporting her then.

Former Senator Robert Torricelli, who led the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm in that election cycle, said on Tuesday that he had never met Mr. Epstein or spoken with him. Robert Zimmerman, who raised funds for Mrs. Clinton’s Senate race, said that he did not have any interactions with Mr. Epstein.

He has given money to only two federal candidates since his 2008 criminal case, one of them being Stacey Plaskett, the Democratic congressional delegate from the Virgin Islands, where he has a home. Ms. Plaskett said on Tuesday that she would give the money to charity.

Sometimes Mr. Epstein’s donations were unexpected and unwanted. Last October, he made an unsolicited $10,000 donation online to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The committee’s finance staff returned it, a former committee official said.

Private as he was, Mr. Epstein was apparently concerned about what the public thought of him. A mutual friend arranged for him to meet R. Couri Hay, a public relations consultant. Mr. Hay said on Monday that their first meeting, at Mr. Epstein’s townhouse, took place three years ago.

Mr. Epstein was not ready to re-emerge in the public eye — not then, anyway. Three months ago, Mr. Epstein called and invited him over to discuss damage control, Mr. Hay said.

“He hates every story starting with ‘billionaire pervert,’” Mr. Hay said. “Jeffrey had long stories about the difference between pedophilia with very young children and tweens and teens a little older.” He added, “It was his way of trying to talk his way around it.”

Mr. Hay said he ultimately declined to work for Mr. Epstein. He said he had misgivings about Mr. Epstein’s sincerity.

 

[Howl]

What's intriguing about Epstein's wealth is that nobody's exactly sure where it comes from or how wealthy he actually is. 

There is, of course, speculation that at least some of that money comes from blackmail. 

There's a bail hearing tomorrow (Thursday).  I'm certain he'll be held in jail, because, besides being insanely rich, he has three US passports, two planes and owns a Carribean island, so checking a lotta boxes for looking kinda flight risk-y.   

[47of74]

Epstein-Barr sounds like the name of a particularly shady and unethical law firm.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[47of74]

 

Yeah I saw that tweet. Someone really needs to get a media person to say that to him on air. Even better if it’s someone from State New....excuse me, I meant Faux News.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Acosta defends wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s plea deal, says Epstein would’ve had no jail time if his office had not intervened"

Spoiler

BREAKING: Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, former U.S. attorney in Miami, says his office staged a rare intervention in a state case in 2008 to make sure Epstein served a sentence and registered as a sex offender: “We wanted to see Epstein go to jail. He needed to go to jail.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Embattled Labor Secretary Alex Acosta on Wednesday defended his role in the case of a wealthy financier facing a new raft of federal child sex trafficking charges, as House Democrats summoned Acosta to testify before Congress.

At a media availability at the Department of Labor, Acosta maintained that when he was a U.S. attorney in Miami, his office “proceeded appropriately” in striking a plea deal years ago with financier Jeffrey Epstein.

But he declined to say whether he has any regrets about how he handled the case.

“Look, no regrets is a very hard question,” Acosta said, adding, “There is a value to a short guilty plea because letting him walk – letting what the state attorney was ready to do go forward – would have been absolutely awful.”

As the top federal prosecutor for the Southern District of Florida at the time, Acosta authorized a 2008 non-prosecution agreement for Epstein that has been widely criticized as excessively lenient.

Acosta did not notify the victims when he and his staff negotiated the plea deal, a decision a federal judge ruled broke the law.

President Trump pushed Acosta to hold the news conference to defend himself and is, for now, not inclined to fire the labor secretary, according to senior administration officials.

But pressure from Democrats is mounting. Earlier Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), joined by four of his Democratic colleagues, sent a letter to Acosta demanding he appear before the powerful investigative panel to testify July 23 on the Epstein plea deal.

“Your testimony is even more critical now that federal prosecutors... have unsealed a new indictment earlier this week outlining a host of additional charges against Mr. Epstein,” said the letter from Cummings and Reps. Jaime Raskin (Md.), Jackie Speier (Calif.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) and Lois Frankel (Fla).

The committee also asked the Justice Department for a briefing on an ongoing review of Acosta’s conduct by the agency’s office that investigates potential misconduct by Justice employees.

Spencer Kuvin, a Florida-based attorney who represented the teenage girl who first reported Epstein to police, among other alleged victims, said that he hopes Congress is “fully informed about the facts of Acosta’s failures” and that “the only way that can be accomplished is a full investigation into the Epstein plea deal.”

“While I applaud the early hearing to question Acosta, Congress should obtain testimony from the women involved and their advocates, so that they can have the full story before Acosta is questioned,” he said.

Acosta, confirmed to his Cabinet post in April 2017, has come under a fresh round of scrutiny this week after federal prosecutors in New York charged Epstein on Monday and alleged he had abused dozens of young girls at his Manhattan and Palm Beach, Fla., homes while enlisting his victims to bring him others.

Several Democrats in Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), have called for Acosta’s resignation. But no Senate Republican — who all voted for Acosta’s confirmation — has explicitly called on Acosta to resign at this point, although several are awaiting the results of a Justice Department probe into the handling of Epstein’s 2008 plea deal before commenting on Acosta’s fate.

Asked at Wednesday’s news conference whether he would have made the same deal today, Acosta declined to say. He argued that “today’s world treats victims very, very differently” and that if a trial were held today, there would be little of the “victim-shaming” that would have taken place 12 years ago.

“I’m here to say we did what we did because we wanted to see Epstein go to jail,” Acosta said. “He needed to go to jail, and that was the focus.”

He also declined to offer an apology to Epstein’s victims for how he handled the case.

“The message to victims is: Come forward,” Acosta said. He added: “In our heart, we were trying to do the right thing for these victims.”

And he dismissed the notion that he was addressing the media in an effort to make his case publicly to the president not to fire him.

“I’m not here to send any signal to the president. . . . I think it’s important that these questions be asked and answered,” he said.

Epstein had signed a non-prosecution agreement with federal authorities and pleaded guilty in state court to felony solicitation of underage girls. During his 13-month sentence in a Palm Beach, Fla., jail, Epstein was allowed to work out of his office six days a week.

A federal judge this year ruled that prosecutors violated the rights of the victims by failing to notify them of an agreement not to bring federal charges.

Nonetheless, Trump has stood by Acosta, telling reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday: “I feel very badly, actually, for Secretary Acosta because I’ve known him as being somebody who works so hard and has done such a good job.”

I hope he resigns this week.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

21 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Acosta defends wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s plea deal, says Epstein would’ve had no jail time if his office had not intervened"

  Reveal hidden contents

BREAKING: Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, former U.S. attorney in Miami, says his office staged a rare intervention in a state case in 2008 to make sure Epstein served a sentence and registered as a sex offender: “We wanted to see Epstein go to jail. He needed to go to jail.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Embattled Labor Secretary Alex Acosta on Wednesday defended his role in the case of a wealthy financier facing a new raft of federal child sex trafficking charges, as House Democrats summoned Acosta to testify before Congress.

At a media availability at the Department of Labor, Acosta maintained that when he was a U.S. attorney in Miami, his office “proceeded appropriately” in striking a plea deal years ago with financier Jeffrey Epstein.

But he declined to say whether he has any regrets about how he handled the case.

“Look, no regrets is a very hard question,” Acosta said, adding, “There is a value to a short guilty plea because letting him walk – letting what the state attorney was ready to do go forward – would have been absolutely awful.”

As the top federal prosecutor for the Southern District of Florida at the time, Acosta authorized a 2008 non-prosecution agreement for Epstein that has been widely criticized as excessively lenient.

Acosta did not notify the victims when he and his staff negotiated the plea deal, a decision a federal judge ruled broke the law.

President Trump pushed Acosta to hold the news conference to defend himself and is, for now, not inclined to fire the labor secretary, according to senior administration officials.

But pressure from Democrats is mounting. Earlier Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), joined by four of his Democratic colleagues, sent a letter to Acosta demanding he appear before the powerful investigative panel to testify July 23 on the Epstein plea deal.

“Your testimony is even more critical now that federal prosecutors... have unsealed a new indictment earlier this week outlining a host of additional charges against Mr. Epstein,” said the letter from Cummings and Reps. Jaime Raskin (Md.), Jackie Speier (Calif.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) and Lois Frankel (Fla).

The committee also asked the Justice Department for a briefing on an ongoing review of Acosta’s conduct by the agency’s office that investigates potential misconduct by Justice employees.

Spencer Kuvin, a Florida-based attorney who represented the teenage girl who first reported Epstein to police, among other alleged victims, said that he hopes Congress is “fully informed about the facts of Acosta’s failures” and that “the only way that can be accomplished is a full investigation into the Epstein plea deal.”

“While I applaud the early hearing to question Acosta, Congress should obtain testimony from the women involved and their advocates, so that they can have the full story before Acosta is questioned,” he said.

Acosta, confirmed to his Cabinet post in April 2017, has come under a fresh round of scrutiny this week after federal prosecutors in New York charged Epstein on Monday and alleged he had abused dozens of young girls at his Manhattan and Palm Beach, Fla., homes while enlisting his victims to bring him others.

Several Democrats in Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), have called for Acosta’s resignation. But no Senate Republican — who all voted for Acosta’s confirmation — has explicitly called on Acosta to resign at this point, although several are awaiting the results of a Justice Department probe into the handling of Epstein’s 2008 plea deal before commenting on Acosta’s fate.

Asked at Wednesday’s news conference whether he would have made the same deal today, Acosta declined to say. He argued that “today’s world treats victims very, very differently” and that if a trial were held today, there would be little of the “victim-shaming” that would have taken place 12 years ago.

“I’m here to say we did what we did because we wanted to see Epstein go to jail,” Acosta said. “He needed to go to jail, and that was the focus.”

He also declined to offer an apology to Epstein’s victims for how he handled the case.

“The message to victims is: Come forward,” Acosta said. He added: “In our heart, we were trying to do the right thing for these victims.”

And he dismissed the notion that he was addressing the media in an effort to make his case publicly to the president not to fire him.

“I’m not here to send any signal to the president. . . . I think it’s important that these questions be asked and answered,” he said.

Epstein had signed a non-prosecution agreement with federal authorities and pleaded guilty in state court to felony solicitation of underage girls. During his 13-month sentence in a Palm Beach, Fla., jail, Epstein was allowed to work out of his office six days a week.

A federal judge this year ruled that prosecutors violated the rights of the victims by failing to notify them of an agreement not to bring federal charges.

Nonetheless, Trump has stood by Acosta, telling reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday: “I feel very badly, actually, for Secretary Acosta because I’ve known him as being somebody who works so hard and has done such a good job.”

I hope he resigns this week.

It's possible, tRump is already saying that he doesn't really know Epstein, never met him in the last ten years etc.

[Howl]

6 hours ago, fraurosena said:

I found this video of Virginia Roberts,

Important to remember that she is Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who sued Ghislaine Maxwell (Epstein's long-time now ex consort and likely procurer) for defamation in (I think) 2013.  The records for that suit can now be unsealed.  

Judge orders release of sealed documents in Jeffrey Epstein case

<snip> 

Quote

The United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ordered the release of sealed court documents in a lawsuit against a woman accused of running a sex trafficking ring with billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.

The court Wednesday ruled that some records in a defamation lawsuit filed by Virginia Roberts Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s alleged associate, be made public, vacating a Manhattan judge’s prior ruling to keep the documents private.

The court also asked a district court to conduct a review of the remaining sealed documents. 

and more background

Spoiler

The lawsuit is an outgrowth of a decade-old criminal proceeding against Epstein, who in 2008 pleaded guilty to charges in Florida of soliciting and procuring a person under the age of 18 for prostitution.

The plea deal, in which Epstein received limited jail‐time, registered as a sex offender and agreed to pay compensation to his victims, allowed him to avoid federal charges. 

Two of Epstein’s alleged victims filed a suit to nullify the plea deal shortly after, saying the government did not inform or consult with them.

Giuffre later joined the suit and, with another unnamed victim, brought forth new allegations of sexual abuse by several others, “including numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well‐known Prime Minister, and other world leaders.” 

The Justice Department opened up an investigation in February into its attorneys’ handling of Epstein’s plea deal.

U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, who at the time was a federal prosecutor, was reportedly involved with the plea deal, according to an investigation conducted by the Miami Herald. 

 

Edited July 10, 2019 by Howl

[Dreadcrumbs]

8 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is a good thread:

The thread includes this info about the orange toxic megacolon (under spoiler because it's disgusting):

  Hide contents

 

Stick a fork in him (Dershowitz), he's done (I hope).

Edited July 10, 2019 by Dreadcrumbs
clarification

[Ozlsn]

8 hours ago, Howl said:

he has three US passports

How the hell did he manage that?! Isn't that illegal?

11 hours ago, Howl said:

And one more thing: Epstein's long-time ex-consort and possible procurer is a woman named Ghislaine Maxwell, whose father was a corrupt British politician (who may have been murdered on his yacht) with murky ties to bad people in Eastern Europe and possibly Russian oligarchs

Is anyone else feeling like they've accidentally wandered into the plot of a really bad novel? Possibly Tom Clancy, Frederick Forsyth, Alastair Maclean-kind of genre? Seriously if the Saudis, Mossad, arms deals, elderly Nazis and drug running turn up I am not going to be at all surprised. 

Seriously though, what is it with these men who think they are above the law?

[FloraKitty35]

7 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Epstein-Barr sounds like the name of a particularly shady and unethical law firm.

I agree.  It sounds like the kind of place that makes Dewey, Cheatam, & Howe, Lionel Hutz, & Saul Goodman look like Clarence Darrow.  

[fraurosena]

Oh look! Up until a few months ago, Epstein was financed by... Deutsche Bank.  

Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Infinite Means’ May Be a Mirage

Quote

When federal prosecutors announced sex-trafficking charges against Jeffrey Epstein this week, they described him as “a man of nearly infinite means.” They argued that his vast wealth — and his two private jets — made him a flight risk.

Mr. Epstein is routinely described as a billionaire and brilliant financier, and he rubbed elbows with the powerful, including former and future presidents. Even after his 2008 guilty plea in a prostitution case in Florida, he promoted himself as a financial wizard who used arcane mathematical models, and he often dropped the names of Nobel Prize-winning friends. He told potential clients that they had to invest a minimum of $1 billion. At his peak in the early 2000s, a magazine profile said he employed 150 people, some working out of the historic Villard Houses on Madison Avenue.

Much of that appears to be an illusion, and there is little evidence that Mr. Epstein is a billionaire.

Mr. Epstein’s wealth may have depended less on his math acumen than his connections to two men — Steven J. Hoffenberg, a onetime owner of The New York Post and a notorious fraudster later convicted of running a $460 million Ponzi scheme, and Leslie H. Wexner, the billionaire founder of retail chains including The Limited and the chief executive of the company that owns Victoria’s Secret.

Mr. Hoffenberg was Mr. Epstein’s partner in two ill-fated takeover bids in the 1980s, including one of Pan American World Airways, and would later claim that Mr. Epstein had been part of the scheme that landed him in jail — although Mr. Epstein was never charged. With Mr. Wexner, Mr. Epstein formed a financial and personal bond that baffled longtime associates of the wealthy retail magnate, who was his only publicly disclosed investor.

Mr. Epstein’s firm, Financial Trust Company, has released no audited financial statements or performance reports to back up his claims of investment prowess. In a 2002 court filing, Mr. Epstein said he had 20 employees, far fewer than reported figures around that time. Six years later, he lost large sums of money in the financial crisis. And friends and patrons — including Mr. Wexner — deserted him after he pleaded guilty to prostitution charges in 2008.

Mr. Epstein, 66, is doubtless very rich: His real estate alone — one of Manhattan’s largest private mansions, a Palm Beach estate, a Paris apartment, his own Caribbean island and a huge New Mexico ranch — is worth more than $200 million. His investment firm reported having $88 million in capital from its shareholders in 2002.

He appears to have been doing business and trading currencies through Deutsche Bank until just a few months ago, according to two people familiar with his business activities. But as the possibility of federal charges loomed, the bank ended its client relationship with Mr. Epstein. It is not clear what the value of those accounts was at the time they were closed.

Early Influences

Mr. Epstein’s big break came when he was teaching math at the Dalton School, a prestigious Manhattan private school, in the mid-1970s. He had tutored the son of Alan Greenberg, the chairman of the mighty investment bank Bear Stearns, and ended up joining the firm.

He left after a few years. Mr. Epstein told Securities and Exchange Commission lawyers in an insider-trading investigation that there were three reasons, according to a 2003 Vanity Fair article. He had been disciplined over lending money to a friend to buy stock, and there were irregularities with his expense account and rumors he was having an affair with a secretary. (Mr. Epstein testified that he had known nothing about any insider trading, and neither he nor anyone else at the firm was charged.)

In 1981, he struck out on his own. He founded his own advisory firm, Intercontinental Assets Group, which he ran out of his apartment on East 66th Street. In 1987, he met Mr. Hoffenberg, then the chief executive of Towers Financial Corporation.

Mr. Hoffenberg said in an interview that he had met Mr. Epstein in New York at the height of the 1980s takeover boom, when Ivan Boesky’s “Merger Mania” was a national best seller. Towers Financial was buying unpaid debt from hospitals, nursing homes and phone companies and trying to collect it — a distinctly unglamorous niche. Mr. Hoffenberg hired Mr. Epstein as a consultant for $25,000 a month, and the two men refashioned themselves as corporate raiders.

Two takeover efforts were spectacular failures. They made a run at Pan Am, and a news release issued by Towers in November 1987 listed their advisers as John Lehman, a former secretary of the Navy; John N. Mitchell, the attorney general during the Nixon administration; and Edward Nixon, former President Richard M. Nixon’s brother. But the bid collapsed after a jetliner exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, which sent Pan Am into bankruptcy.

Mr. Epstein and Mr. Hoffenberg also made a run at Emery Air Freight — an “epic failure,” according to an affidavit filed by Mr. Hoffenberg in a 2018 lawsuit against Mr. Epstein, which was brought by investors defrauded in Mr. Hoffenberg’s Ponzi scheme. The suit was dismissed.

One takeover bid involving Mr. Epstein met with success: He told Vanity Fair in 2003 that he had invested $1 million, including $300,000 of his own money, in a raid on Pennwalt, a chemical processing firm in Philadelphia. Pennwalt eventually accepted an offer from a French company that was nearly double the price at which the investor group began acquiring shares, giving Mr. Epstein a profit.

A Rapid Rise

In 1988, when Mr. Epstein was still working for Mr. Hoffenberg, he formed the investment firm that would be the nexus for his connections to powerful people: J. Epstein & Company. One of those people, Mr. Wexner, would become the apparent foundation of Mr. Epstein’s riches.

Mr. Epstein met — and evidently charmed — Robert Meister, the vice chairman of the insurance giant Aon, on a flight from New York to Palm Beach, Fla., according to an account by the novelist James Patterson in his nonfiction book “Filthy Rich.”

Mr. Meister, who could not be reached for comment, introduced Mr. Epstein to Mr. Wexner. There appears to have been a near instant rapport.

Robert Morosky, who had been the vice chairman of The Limited, was surprised Mr. Wexner took to Mr. Epstein so readily. “Everyone was mystified as to what his appeal was,” Mr. Morosky said. “I checked around and found out he was a private high school math teacher, and that was all I could find out. There was just nothing there.”

At the time, Forbes estimated Mr. Wexner’s net worth at $1.8 billion, placing him 52nd on its billionaires list. Managing his money would be a lucrative business, but Mr. Epstein did more than that: A corporation controlled jointly by the two men bought a mansion on East 71st Street in Manhattan in 1989 for $13.2 million, at the time the highest price ever paid for a Manhattan townhouse, according to property records.

Mr. Epstein was also closely involved with Mr. Wexner in a corporation that oversaw the transformation of New Albany, an Ohio suburb near The Limited’s Columbus headquarters, into a manicured, neo-Georgian utopia. In 1998, they appeared as co-presidents on the New Albany Corporation’s Ohio registration. Both men owned mansions in the community.

“I think we both possess the skill of seeing patterns,” Mr. Wexner told Vanity Fair in 2003. “But Jeffrey sees patterns in politics and financial markets, and I see patterns in lifestyle and fashion trends.”

By 1998 — the year he bought Little St. James, a 70-acre island off St. Thomas — Mr. Epstein had renamed his firm Financial Trust Company and moved it to the Virgin Islands. Mr. Epstein said he had told clients that he accepted only investments greater than $1 billion.

A corporate disclosure form from 2002 portrays a less impressive picture. Thomas Volscho, a sociology professor at the College of Staten Island who has been researching for a book on Mr. Epstein, recently obtained the form, which shows Financial Trust had $88 million in contributions from shareholders. In a court filing that year, Mr. Epstein said his firm had about 20 employees, far fewer than the 150 reported at the time by New York magazine.

There were clients other than Mr. Wexner. Mr. Epstein performed some services for the Johnson & Johnson heiress Elizabeth Johnson, showing up as a co-trustee on 14 parcels of land owned in Dutchess County, N.Y. Most of the deeds were recorded in 1998, but Mr. Epstein resigned as a trustee for Ms. Johnson’s revocable trust at the end of that year, according to a document reviewed by The New York Times.

It was also in 1998 that Mr. Epstein took sole possession of the 71st Street mansion. Mr. Wexner conveyed his interest in the corporation that owned it to one controlled by Mr. Epstein for $20 million, according to a person familiar with the transaction.

By 2003, Mr. Epstein had the means to pledge $30 million to Harvard University to fund a program in evolutionary dynamics, seeded with a $6.5 million gift.

A Stunning Fall

But the financial crisis cost Mr. Epstein some of his fortune, and allegations of sexual abuse with teenage girls cost him some of his friends.

Bear Stearns — the bank that had given Mr. Epstein his start — was still among his investments when the crisis hit. According to a lawsuit he later filed against the bank, Mr. Epstein controlled about 176,000 shares of Bear Stearns, worth nearly $18 million, in August 2007.

Mr. Epstein sold 56,000 shares at $101 each that month. He sold the remaining 120,000 shares in March 2008 as the firm was collapsing — 20,000 at $35 and the rest at $3.04, losing big. He also lost about $50 million in one of Bear’s hedge funds.

By the time Bear Stearns came apart, Mr. Epstein was at the center of his first abuse case. He pleaded guilty to prostitution charges in 2008, receiving a jail sentence that allowed him to work at home during the day but also required him to register as a sex offender.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Wexner said he “severed ties” with Mr. Epstein 12 years ago. But not everyone immediately abandoned Mr. Epstein after he was charged in 2006.

Mr. Epstein was an investor in Environmental Solutions Worldwide, a maker of emission-control products, in 2011 with several people close to Leon Black, the billionaire founder of the private equity firm Apollo Management, including Mr. Black’s four children. It was for that company that Mr. Epstein’s company filed its lone S.E.C. disclosure form.

The company’s current shareholders are not publicly available; it no longer trades on a registered exchange, and does not have to make public filings.

Mr. Epstein was also listed as a director of the Debra and Leon Black Family Foundation until 2012, although the foundation said he had resigned in 2007. “The inaccuracy was discovered and corrected,” the foundation said in a statement.

In recent years, Mr. Epstein was a client of Deutsche Bank’s private-banking division, which caters to ultrawealthy individuals and families. The bank provided Mr. Epstein with loans and wealth-management accounts, as well as trading services through its investment banking arm, according to two people familiar with the relationship. At one point, compliance officers at Deutsche Bank raised concerns about transactions by Mr. Epstein’s company, because he posed reputational risk to the bank, the people said.

Deutsche Bank managers overruled their concerns, the people said. They noted that there was nothing illegal about the transactions and that Mr. Epstein was a lucrative client.

Earlier this year, the bank ended its relationship with Mr. Epstein.

Concerns about Epsteins transactions raised by compliance officers at Deutsche Bank were overruled by its managers. Now where have we heard that before...? ?

[Howl]

12 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

s anyone else feeling like they've accidentally wandered into the plot of a really bad novel? Possibly Tom Clancy, Frederick Forsyth, Alastair Maclean-kind of genre? Seriously if the Saudis, Mossad, arms deals, elderly Nazis and drug running turn up I am not going to be at all surprised. 

Now, supposedly, Epstein was (supposedly) involved in (supposed) "Intelligence activities" which is (supposedly) why he was almost untouchable.  I suspect money laundering and blackmail are much more likely. 

If ever there were a red herring...Hey! Look! Over there!  Powerful men of means were involved in a child sex circle.  It isn't more complicated than that. 

I still don't quite understand how the whole original plea deal went down in Fl.  This Raw Story article (Fresh demands for Labor Secretary Acosta’s resignation mount after Jeffrey Epstein arrested for child sex trafficking) has a few of the pieces.  I need to go back and read Julia K Brown's work. 

Miami Herald's reporter Julie K. Brown detailed how Acosta, then U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, worked with Epstein’s attorneys to craft an agreement that was kept secret from Epstein’s victims.  This is against the law and may be what voids the plea deal. This will be fought to the death on all sides. 

The plea deal, called a non prosecution agreement, apparently shut down an ongoing FIB probe searching for more wealthy, powerful perpetrators and their victims.  In the end, Epstein pled guilty to two charges of prostitution in state court, avoided Federal charges, served time in a Palm Beach county jail, commuted home for 12 hours six days a week.   Four named accomplices received immunity from all federal charges.  According to the Miami Herald's Julia K. Brown (and this is the crux element): 

Quote

But even more unusual, the deal included wording that granted immunity to “any potential co-conspirators” who were also involved in Epstein’s crimes. 

These potential co-conspirators were not named.  

One thing that gives me hope is that this is salacious content.  It was on the front page of my newspaper today, below the fold, but still.  The salacious nature of the whole thing is what will keep it in the news.  Barr will be under a freaking microscope.  

I don't know why, but I keep going waaaaaay back to the  old days of the sex scandals in England and British tabloid journalism.  Anyone remember the Profumo affair? 

Quote

Wiki: The Profumo affair was a British political scandal that originated with a brief sexual relationship in 1961 between John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War in Harold Macmillan's Conservative government, and Christine Keeler, a 19-year-old would-be model.  

It brought down the entire government.  The club where this hapless pair met was described as louche. 

Edited July 11, 2019 by Howl

[formergothardite]

5 minutes ago, Howl said:

granted immunity to “any potential co-conspirators” who were also involved in Epstein’s crimes. 

I suspect Epstein was paid a bit to take his light fall and ensure everyone else was protected. But this house of cards seems to be crumbling. 

[Howl]

5 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

I suspect Epstein was paid a bit to take his light fall and ensure everyone else was protected. But this house of cards seems to be crumbling. 

What an interesting thought!  This had not crossed my mind.