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Undated: Jeffrey Edward Epstein (born January 20, 1953) is an American financier, science and research philantropist, and registered sex offender.[1] Epstein began his career at the investment bank Bear Stearns before forming his own firm, J. Epstein & Co. In 2008, Epstein was convicted of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution, for which he served 13 months in "custody with work release".[2] He lives in the United States Virgin Islands.
A federal lawsuit filed in California in April 2016 against Epstein and Donald Trump by a California woman alleged the men sexually assaulted her at a series of parties at Epstein's Manhattan home in 1994, when she was 13 years of age. The suit was dismissed by a federal judge in May 2016 because it didn't raise valid claims under federal law. The woman filed another federal suit in New York in June 2016, but it was withdrawn three months later, apparently without being served on the defendants. A third federal suit was filed in New York in September 2016. The two latter suits included affidavits by an anonymous witness who attested to the accusations in the suits, and an anonymous person who declared the plaintiff had told him/her about the assaults at the time they occurred. The plaintiff, who had filed anonymously as Jane Doe, was scheduled to appear in a Los Angeles press conference six days before the 2016 election, but abruptly canceled the event; her lawyer Lisa Bloom asserted the woman had received threats.
The suit was dropped on November 4, 2016. Trump attorney Alan Garten flatly denied the allegations, while Epstein declined to comment.[39][40][41][42]
In January 2015, a 31-year-old American woman, Virginia Roberts, alleged in a sworn affidavit that at the age of 17, she had been held as a sex slave by Epstein. She further alleged that he had trafficked her to several people, including Prince Andrew and Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz. Roberts also claimed that Epstein and others had physically and sexually abused her.[43]
Roberts alleged that the FBI may have been involved in a cover-up.[44] She said she had served as Epstein's sex slave from 1999 to 2002 and had recruited other under-age girls.[45] Prince Andrew, Epstein and Dershowitz all denied having had sex with Roberts. Dershowitz took legal action over the allegations.[46][47][48] A diary purported to belong to Roberts was published online.[49][50] Epstein entered an out-of-court settlement with Roberts, as he has done in several other lawsuits.[8]
The BBC television series Panorama planned an investigation of the scandal.[51] As of 2016 these claims had not been tested in any law court.[52]
Trump said of Epstein in 2002: "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."[60]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein
-- 2018 --
November 28: Jeffrey Epstein had a little black book filled with the names and personal phone numbers of some of the world’s wealthiest and most influential people, from Bill Clinton and Donald Trump to actors, actresses, scientists and business tycoons.
A money manager for the super-rich, Epstein had two private jets, the largest single residence in Manhattan, an island in the Caribbean, a ranch in New Mexico and a waterfront estate in Florida.
But Epstein also had an obsession.
For years, Epstein lured an endless stream of teenage girls to his Palm Beach mansion, offering to pay them for massages. Instead, police say, for years he coerced middle and high school girls into engaging in sex acts with him and others.
As evidence emerged that there were victims and witnesses outside of Palm Beach, the FBI began an investigation in 2006 into whether Epstein and others employed by him were involved in underage sex trafficking.
But in 2007, despite substantial evidence that corroborated the girls’ stories of abuse by Epstein, the U.S. attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, signed off on a secret deal for the multimillionaire, one that ensured he would never spend a day in prison.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article221897990.html
November 28: Epstein had no shortage of powerful friends, including Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, and Alan Dershowitz — all of whom, at various points, frequented planes and properties that Epstein allegedly used for sexually abusing girls, sometimes with other men.
Generally speaking, American prosecutors do not take corporate securities fraud more seriously than serial child molestation and sex trafficking. But whatever the motivation behind Acosta’s decision, his acceptance of Epstein’s plea agreement surely disqualifies him from leading a federal agency responsible for combating sex trafficking.
[Epstein's punishment was apparently just a] 13-month sentence, to be served in a private wing of a county jail – except for the six days a week when the suspect works. On those days, he will be allowed to commute to his private office, and “work” for 12 hours.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/epstein-plea-acosta-miami-herald-investigation-sex-crimes-trump-clinton.html
December 3: President Trump won’t be testifying, though lawyers in the case tried to depose him. President Bill Clinton won’t be there either, though he, like Trump, was an occasional guest of the man at the center of the trial, billionaire sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.
Don’t expect to find Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta in the courtroom in West Palm Beach, Fla., though his decision not to prosecute Epstein was a milestone in the twisting path toward the courtroom showdown that is finally supposed to begin Tuesday after nearly nine years of byzantine bickering.
Even Epstein himself, the prime figure in the legal battle, isn’t expected to show up; he’ll deliver his version of this epic by affidavit. Though the trial mainly will feature battalions of lawyers fighting over the actions of another set of lawyers, the case could offer a window into a sordid saga of sexual exploitation that includes many big names in American politics.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/palm-beach-trial-could-reveal-details-of-billionaires-alleged-abuse-of-teen-girls/2018/12/03/f42e0c4e-f4d0-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.defe0f502e58
December 4: Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who is friends with Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, explained
How a money manager to the super-wealthy used his “collection” of famous friends to avoid a prison sentence for molesting young girls.
Jeffrey Epstein could have gone to prison for life.
The money manager was accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls at his Palm Beach mansion between 2001 and 2006. But as Julie K. Brown reports at the Miami Herald, he ultimately got just 13 months in a county jail, thanks to a deal signed by Alexander Acosta, then the US Attorney for Miami and now President Trump’s secretary of labor. On Tuesday, Epstein settled a lawsuit in which some of his accusers were expected to testify, avoiding yet again the prospect of facing the women in court.
Epstein has said that any encounters he had with his accusers were consensual, and that he believed they were 18 at the time.
Finally, in 2005, a woman reported to Florida police that a wealthy man had molested her stepdaughter, according to the Daily Beast. The tip led Palm Beach detectives to investigate, and they identified multiple girls who said Epstein had abused them. The case was eventually referred to the FBI, and in 2008, after years of investigation and legal wrangling, Epstein pleaded guilty to charges of solicitation of prostitution and procurement of minors for prostitution in a deal with federal prosecutors.
According to court and police records reviewed by the Miami Herald’s Julie Brown, Epstein routinely had underage girls brought to his Palm Beach mansion, where he paid them to give him massages. During the massages, he often subjected the girls to sexual abuse — asking them to touch him while he masturbated, touching them himself, and sometimes having intercourse with them, Brown reports. Then, according to the Herald, he would offer them money to find him more girls — which some of them did, finding recruits at malls and house parties.
https://www.vox.com/2018/12/3/18116351/jeffrey-epstein-trump-clinton-crimes-molestation
December 4: Last week, a multi-part expose by the Miami Herald revealed that President Donald Trump’s Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who was Miami’s top federal prosecutor at the time, was instrumental in ensuring Epstein received an “extraordinary plea agreement” in 2007.
Epstein faced potentially spending the rest of his life in federal prison for being accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls at his Florida mansion between 2001 and 2006. The Miami Herald “identified about 80 women who say they were molested or otherwise sexually abused by Epstein” during that period.
Instead, with Acosta’s help, he spent a little over a year in a county jail.
The 65-year-old — who counted Trump, former President Bill Clinton, and actors Woody Allen and Kevin Spacey among his acquaintances — has clearly received preferential legal treatment due to his millions and friends in high places.
Before Epstein was accused of “trafficking minor girls, often from overseas, for sex parties,” he counted two of the five living U.S. presidents as his associates.
“The common interview with a girl went like this: ‘I was brought there by so and so. I didn’t feel comfortable with what happened, but I got paid well, so I was told if I didn’t feel comfortable, I could bring someone else and still get paid,” said former Palm Beach police detective Joseph Recarey.
According to a police report obtained by the Miami Herald, “girls — mostly 13 to 16 — were lured to” Epstein’s mansion by people “who went to malls, house parties and other places where girls congregated, and told recruits that they could earn $200 to $300 to give a man — Epstein — a massage.
The Miami Herald also explained how Epstein’s plea agreement shielded him from his victims.
As part of the arrangement, Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that the deal would be kept from the victims. As a result, the non-prosecution agreement was sealed until after it was approved by the judge, thereby averting any chance that the girls — or anyone else — might show up in court and try to derail it.
As a result, Epstein’s crimes reportedly weren’t known to most until years later. He has “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.”
https://thinkprogress.org/jeffrey-epstein-sex-offender-lawsuit-donald-trump-bill-clinton-lolita-express-98886e15c076/
December 11: Trump’s labor secretary once helped a sex offender stay out of prison. The Senate wants answers.
Accused of molesting girls, the wealthy and well-connected Jeffrey Epstein got the “deal of a lifetime” from Alexander Acosta. Senators from both parties want to know why.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/11/18134325/jeffrey-epstein-miami-herald-alex-acosta-trump
December 11: Lawyers for two of politically connected sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's victims are pushing a federal judge in Florida to finally rule on their request to void the moneyman's controversial nonprosecution deal with the feds.
Attorneys for Courtney Wild and a woman known only as "Jane Doe" filed their motions asking Judge Kenneth Marra to rule on the decade-old case over a year ago, but the judge has not yet done so.
On Monday, the lawyers filed a motion noting that it's been well over 90 days since all the paperwork has been filed on both sides of the case — nudging the judge to issue his long-awaited ruling.
The victims' suit argues that the deal was illegal because dozens of Epstein's victims were never told about it ahead of time, in violation of the federal Crime Victims' Rights Act (CVRA). The government maintains it didn't have to tell the women about the deal because Epstein hadn't officially been charged with assaulting them.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jeffrey-epstein-victims-lawyers-push-ruling-non-prosecution-deal-n946581
November 30: Lawmakers call for investigation of Labor Secretary Acosta after scathing report
A Democratic group of lawmakers is calling for a Justice Department investigation into Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta after a scathing report revealed decade-old allegations that he granted an alleged serial pedophile the “deal of a lifetime’’ while serving as a U.S. attorney in South Florida.
The still-growing group, led by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., called on Inspector General Michael Horowitz to investigate Acosta's role in a plea deal for Jeffrey Epstein, a multimillionaire financier. Epstein was convicted in 2008 of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution, but a Miami Herald investigation this week said the allegations against him were originally much broader, accusing him of coercing dozens of underage girls into sex acts.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/11/30/lawmakers-labor-secretary-alexander-acosta-should-investigated/2156355002/
-- 2019 --
February 22: Federal prosecutors broke law in Jeffrey Epstein case, judge rules
Federal prosecutors, under former Miami U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, broke the law when they concealed a plea agreement from more than 30 underage victims who had been sexually abused by wealthy New York hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
While the decision marks a victory for crime victims, the federal judge, Kenneth A. Marra, stopped short of overturning Epstein’s plea deal, or issuing an order resolving the case. He instead gave federal prosecutors 15 days to confer with Epstein’s victims and their attorneys to come up with a settlement. The victims did not seek money or damages as part of the suit.
It’s not clear whether the victims, now in their late 20s and early 30s, can, as part of the settlement, demand that the government prosecute Epstein. But others are calling on the Justice Department to take a new look at the case in the wake of the judge’s ruling.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article226577419.html
-- 2020 --
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