Epstein's Arrest and Background

       Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you probably have heard that Jeffrey Epstein was arrested this past Saturday for sex trafficking of minors. From the aforementioned Daily Beast article:

     For more than a decade, Epstein’s alleged abuse of minors has been the subject of lawsuits brought by victims, investigations by local and federal authorities, and exposés in the press. But despite the attention cast on his alleged sex crimes, the hedge-funder has managed to avoid any meaningful jail time, let alone federal charges.

      The new indictment—which, according to two sources, will be unsealed Monday in Manhattan federal court—will reportedly allege that Epstein sexually exploited dozens of underage girls in a now-familiar scheme: paying them cash for “massages” and then molesting or sexually abusing them in his Upper East Side mansion or his palatial residence in Palm Beach. Epstein will be charged with one count of sex trafficking of minors and one count of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minors—which could put him away for a maximum of 45 years. The case is being handled by the Public Corruption Unit of the Southern District of New York, with assistance from the district's human-trafficking officials and the FBI.

       Several of the billionaire's employees and associates allegedly recruited the girls for Epstein's abuse, and some victims eventually became recruiters themselves, according to law enforcement. The girls were as young as 14, and Epstein knew they were underage, according to details of the arrest and indictment shared by two officials.

This comes some 12 years after Epstein was given a sweetheart deal on charges of molesting minors (he ultimately pled guilty to two charges: soliciting a prostitute and procurement of a minor for prostitution). This 2008 plea deal saved him from having to register as a sex offender in 31 of 50 states.

      To be fair, the federal prosecutor on the case, Alexander Acosta, claims that "[h]e’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had 'been told' to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. 'I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,' he told his interviewers in the Trump transition, who evidently thought that was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta." This matches up with news articles from last year which indicated that Epstein's 2008 plea deal was in exchange for him providing information to Mueller's FBI, although it is unknown what information he provided. (See The Daily Beast; Palm Beach Post; Big League Politics). Some have suggested that Epstein assisted in a federal case against a couple of Bear Stearns employees, but Fox News says this isn't so:

But a FOX Business investigation shows that Epstein did not provide any meaningful cooperation to obtain his relatively light sentence in the hedge fund case or likely any case tied to the financial crisis, according to numerous people with direct knowledge of the matter. In fact, Epstein’s cooperation with prosecutors does not appear to extend beyond supplying state and federal investigators with information involving his own case, these people add.

Red State notes that the plea deal was authorized by then-Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip, and suggests that the plea deal was because of Epstein's cozy relationship with Bill Clinton.

     But the story doesn't end there. Epstein pled not guilty to the charges on Monday, but the FBI was in the process of carrying out a search of his Manhattan residence where they found evidence of other crimes:

     Prosecutors say federal agents investigating wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein found “nude photographs of what appeared to be underage girls” while searching his Manhattan mansion.

      U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said at a press conference Monday agents discovered the photos while executing a search warrant following Epstein’s arrest Saturday on sex trafficking charges. 

The indictment that provided grounds for his arrest last Saturday doesn't mention anything about photographs, so it is likely the charges against Epstein will be amended to include charges for child pornography. And while not necessarily criminal, there were other suggestive items found at the residence:

      The $77 million New York townhouse where Jeffrey Epstein is accused of abusing young girls has a life-sized female doll hanging from a chandelier, a signed photo of Bill Clinton and a bizarre mural of himself in prison surrounded by barbed wire. 

 * * *

     He has a table in his dining room covered with photos of famous faces, including a signed picture with former president Bill Clinton. 

     There is also a wall in Epstein's study decorated with photos of director Woody Allen and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. 

* * *

     Authorities also allegedly found papers and phone records corroborating his alleged crimes, as well as a massage room filled with sex toys and set up the way accusers said it appeared. 

(See also this Reuters article and this Miami Herald article).

      But that is not all. Some of his victims have come forward and accused Epstein of passing them around to others, including very wealthy and/or powerful people, including Bill Clinton. The Daily Caller reports that "Jeffrey Epstein was friends with a who’s who of high-profile politicians, celebrities and media elites, including Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Prince Andrew," and that "[i]n 2010, after completing a jail sentence related to a sex case in Florida, Epstein reportedly hosted George Stephanopoulos, Katie Couric, Woody Allen and Chelsea Handler at his New York City townhouse." Also, the article indicates:

Epstein’s Rolodex, which was leaked in 2011, was also filled with the names of easily recognizable politicians and celebrities, including actors Alec Baldwin, Ralph Fiennes, Dustin Hoffman, and Elizabeth Hurley. Mick Jagger and Rupert Murdoch are also listed in the book, as are politicians Tony Blair, Michael Bloomberg, Andrew Cuomo, and Ted Kennedy.

This site claims to have a copy of Epstein's "little black book." Epstein was allegedly assisted in his "recruitment" of young girls by wealthy socialite, Ghislaine Maxwell (daughter of British media tycoon, Robert Maxwell). Given that Epstein and Maxwell are both Jewish, the Jewish community is understandably anxious and defensive.

    Note that, while the media has tried to besmirch President Trump because he knew Epstein, "[t]he lawyer for one of the victims of Jeffrey Epstein said President Trump was the 'only' high powered person to help him with his investigation, contradicting claims by some that Trump is implicated in Epstein’s crimes." And "Trump once kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-lago club after he caught Epstein hitting on a young girl."

     The ties with Bill Clinton are more interesting. First, Epstein was no mere acquaintance with Bill Clinton. Instead, Epstein's lawyers have indicated that Epstein helped president Bill Clinton devise the Clinton Global Initiative. Clinton even seems to acknowledge close ties to Epstein. Nevertheless, Clinton has released statements saying that he had no knowledge of Esptein's crimes, and that:

"In 2002 and 2003, President Clinton took a total of four trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane: one to Europe, one to Asia, and two to Africa, which included stops in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation," the statement said. "Staff, supporters of the foundation, and his Secret Service detail traveled on every leg of every trip. He had one meeting with Epstein in his Harlem office in 2002, and around the same time made one brief visit to Epstein’s New York apartment with a staff member and his security detail. He’s not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade, and he has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida.”

However, "[f]ormer President Bill Clinton was a much more frequent flyer on a registered sex offender’s infamous jet than previously reported, with flight logs showing the former president taking at least 26 trips aboard the 'Lolita Express' -- even apparently ditching his Secret Service detail for at least five of the flights, according to records obtained by FoxNews.com." And one of Epstein's victims claims that Clinton visited Little St. James Island. This also seems to be confirmed by the flight logs. Ed Morrissey delves deeper into this, writing:

      Actually, what Giuffre said in 2015 (under her maiden name of Virginia Roberts) was that she’d seen Clinton around on the island, directly contradicting Clinton’s claims now. That’s a point that Fox skips in this parenthetical. Giuffre also said in the Enquirer interview that she didn’t witness him having sex with anyone, but that doesn’t mean it never happened, either. At any rate, his presence on the island with Epstein raises a lot of questions about what it was that Clinton saw — and why Clinton never spoke out about it.

     And if Giuffre is correct about Clinton being on the island, it might turn out that Epstein has some pictures in his possession that would corroborate Giuffre. Or rather, Epstein might have had them in his possession, until Saturday night’s raid. Given that circumstance and the corroborated version of the conversation between Pecker, Nunberg, and Trump, one would think that Clinton’s potential risk here would be a bigger story than Trump’s single briefing about Epstein from Pecker.

     Here’s another nugget from the 2015 interview that’s timely now, too. This tends to corroborate the claim from a woman who came forward today that Epstein wasn’t just molesting girls but flat-out raping them:

     As The ENQUIRER first reported, Epstein’s socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, procured Roberts and others for Epstein and his pals to engage in “forceful” sex with underage girls, the filing confirmed.

     Roberts’ affidavit charges that Maxwell, the daughter of the late UK newspaper mogul Robert Maxwell, recruited her for prostitution in 1999 at age 15.

     “I was trained to be ‘everything a man wanted to be,” Roberts said, detailing multiple sex encounters daily, instruction in the use of sex toys and Epstein’s reputed sex dungeon.

      There is also a mystery as to how Epstein made his fortune. Bloomberg, for instance, reports that:

      For all his infamy, there are scant details of how he made his money. While he’s frequently been called a billionaire, his net worth is hard to ascertain. He ran a money management firm catering to the ultra-rich, primarily for Victoria’s Secret founder Les Wexner, but its assets were never made public and few on Wall Street have dealt with him as a financier or money manager.

       According to his lawyers more than a decade ago, he had a net worth in excess of nine figures. Today, so little is known about Epstein’s current business or clients that the only things that can be valued with any certainty are his properties. The Manhattan mansion is estimated to be worth at least $77 million, according to a federal document submitted in advance of Epstein’s bail hearing.

      He also has properties in New Mexico, Paris and the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he has a private island, and a Palm Beach estate with an assessed value of more than $12 million. He shuttles between them by private jet and has at least 15 cars, including seven Chevrolet Suburbans, according to federal authorities.

     Epstein’s early career is better documented. Born in 1953 and raised in Brooklyn, Epstein dropped out of Cooper Union and NYU’s Courant Institute. He landed a gig teaching calculus and physics at Manhattan’s exclusive Dalton School between 1973 and 1975, according to a 2002 New York magazine profile, where his students included the son of Bear Stearns Chairman Alan Greenberg.

      He joined Bear Stearns in 1976 as a lowly junior assistant to a floor trader. In a swift rise, trading options, he made partner four years later, with former Chief Executive Officer Jimmy Cayne praising his skills. He left in 1981 to set up J. Epstein & Co., but one bank executive said he remained close to Cayne and Greenberg and was a client until Bear Stearns’ demise.

     Epstein’s money management business had an exclusive focus: It would serve only billionaires. Epstein reportedly made all the investment calls.

     Since the 1990s, the company has been incorporated in the U.S. Virgin Islands and is now called Financial Trust Co. 

In fact, as Forbes reports, no one knows how much (or how little) money he has, although he has asserted in court documents to be worth at least 9 figures. The mystery of his wealth has led to speculation that Epstein "was video-recording highly illegal and morally reprehensible rapes for use as blackmail material" or as insurance against being prosecuted.

    There are a couple of takeaways from this. First, this is not a unique incident. As Paul Joseph Watson points out in a 2017 video (posted below), there have and continue to be a large number of these underage and pedophile scandals involving the wealthy and powerful.

"Pedophiles Rule the World"--Paul Joseph Watson (14 min.)

     Second, as Glenn Reynolds observes: "[B]ack when the elites had more power, scandals like this wouldn’t have come out at all. The increasing number of scandals involving the formerly untouchable probably means that elites are weaker, rather than dirtier, than decades ago."

     Finally, I don't believe that we--the public, that is--will ever learn the full truth of the matter.