General Epstein Articles

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General Epstein Articles:

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• 08/10/25: Trump Biographer on Trump, Epstein, and the ‘Pussy Committee’. Michael Wolff’s MeidasTouch exclusive reveals a grotesque bet, royal connections, and the depravity at the heart of Trump’s circle, Ben Meiselas and MeidasTouch Network
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Exclusive: Trump Biographer on Trump, Epstein, and the ‘Pussy Committee’. Michael Wolff’s MeidasTouch exclusive reveals a grotesque bet, royal connections, and the depravity at the heart of Trump’s circle
Ben Meiselas and MeidasTouch Network
Aug 10, 2025

https://www.meidasplus.com/p/exclusive-trump-biographer-on-trump

Let me warn you up front: this one is stomach-turning even by Donald Trump’s standards.

In a new exclusive for the MeidasTouch Network, author and former Trump biographer Michael Wolff lays out disturbing details of Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and the British royal family — and the so-called “Pussy Committee” they allegedly formed with the express purpose of procuring girls for Prince Andrew.

According to Wolff, after Princess Diana’s separation from now-King Charles, Trump and Epstein had a sick “friendly” bet over who could sleep with her first. Both men were reportedly obsessed with the royals, not out of admiration, but as a social-climbing shortcut to money, status, and access. Ghislaine Maxwell, leveraging her deep British high-society connections, was the link between Trump, Epstein, and the royal circle.

Wolff says the “Pussy Committee” was their disgusting in-house operation to feed Prince Andrew’s “insatiable appetite” for girls and his desperate need for cash. Epstein’s and Trump’s motives were simple: proximity to the royal family was a golden ticket, opening doors, laundering reputations, and expanding influence.

These aren’t just lurid gossip items. This is about power, corruption, and abuse at the highest levels. It’s about an individual who is president of the United States allegedly treating women and girls as bargaining chips in his personal climb toward money and prestige, and the cover-up that is still ongoing.

We’re going to keep exposing these connections. Watch the report above, and remember to share it far and wide. If you are able to support our independent reporting, join now as a paid subscriber.

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https://www.rawstory.com/ghislaine-maxw ... k-release/

Ghislaine Maxwell cleared to leave prison on work release: report
David Edwards
August 12, 2025 11:49AM ET

Ghislaine Maxwell cleared to leave prison on work release: report
By David Edwards
August 12, 2025 11:49AM ET

Ghislaine Maxwell cleared to leave prison on work release: report
Ghislaine Maxwell with Jeffrey Epstein. Photograph via Shutterstock

Convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has reportedly been cleared to leave prison on work release.

Podcast host Allison Gill obtained information about Maxwell's security score, sex offender waiver, and other details after the former partner of Jeffrey Epstein was moved to a minimum-security prison in Texas.

According to journalist Adam Klasfeld, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) raised questions about Maxwell's new prison accommodations in a letter to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The senator demanded to know if Maxwell received special treatment after meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump's former personal attorney.

ALSO READ: 'America is gone': Tiny act of kindness illuminates stark new reality of Trump's DC


Documents viewed by Gill indicated that Maxwell was given a 7-point base security score — the highest possible because she is a sex offender and considered a danger to the community.

"Despite her score of 27 resulting in a MINIMUM security level, BOP policy does not allow people with a sex offender PSF (Public Safety Factor) to serve their sentences in minimum security facilities. Someone has to waive the PSF to make that move," Gill noted.

GET THE NEW RAW STORY APP.
The documents also showed that Maxwell's custody level was set to "OUT," allowing her to leave the prison to work.

Gill explained that sex offender Epstein, Maxwell's associate, enjoyed the same ability to work outside prison after a "sweetheart deal" penned by attorney Alan Dershowitz and approved by Alex Acosta, who served under former President George W. Bush and Trump.

Ghislaine Maxwell cleared to leave prison on work release: report
David Edwards
August 12, 2025 11:49AM ET
BeLoud Share
Ghislaine Maxwell cleared to leave prison on work release: report
Ghislaine Maxwell with Jeffrey Epstein. Photograph via Shutterstock

Convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has reportedly been cleared to leave prison on work release.

Podcast host Allison Gill obtained information about Maxwell's security score, sex offender waiver, and other details after the former partner of Jeffrey Epstein was moved to a minimum-security prison in Texas.

According to journalist Adam Klasfeld, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) raised questions about Maxwell's new prison accommodations in a letter to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The senator demanded to know if Maxwell received special treatment after meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump's former personal attorney.

ALSO READ: 'America is gone': Tiny act of kindness illuminates stark new reality of Trump's DC


Documents viewed by Gill indicated that Maxwell was given a 7-point base security score — the highest possible because she is a sex offender and considered a danger to the community.

"Despite her score of 27 resulting in a MINIMUM security level, BOP policy does not allow people with a sex offender PSF (Public Safety Factor) to serve their sentences in minimum security facilities. Someone has to waive the PSF to make that move," Gill noted.

GET THE NEW RAW STORY APP.
The documents also showed that Maxwell's custody level was set to "OUT," allowing her to leave the prison to work.

Gill explained that sex offender Epstein, Maxwell's associate, enjoyed the same ability to work outside prison after a "sweetheart deal" penned by attorney Alan Dershowitz and approved by Alex Acosta, who served under former President George W. Bush and Trump.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... i-official

Israeli government official arrested in Nevada in internet crimes against children sting
Tom Artiom Alexandrovich was released and returned to Israel after being charged with luring a child for a sex act

Ramon Antonio Vargas
Sat 16 Aug 2025 10.16 EDT
Share
An Israeli government cybersecurity official was reportedly arrested recently by Las Vegas police and other authorities in Nevada who were conducting an undercover investigation aimed at online users seeking to sexually prey on children.

Tom Artiom Alexandrovich, 38, faces felony charges of luring a child with a computer for a sex act, alongside several other suspects who were apprehended during the two-week sting operation, the Las Vegas metropolitan police department said in a statement published on Friday. He has since been released from custody on $10,000 bail after an initial court appearance, records show, and returned to Israel.

As first reported by the news site Mediaite, a publicly posted screenshot of Alexandrovich’s page on the LinkedIn professional networking platform described him as the executive director of the Israel Cyber Directorate, an Israeli government agency under the purview of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. Other information online attributes the same position to Alexandrovich.

The screenshot first reported by Mediaite also showed a post under Alexandrovich’s name alluding to his having been in Las Vegas earlier in August for the Black Hat Briefings, a yearly meeting of cybersecurity professionals.

“Two things you can’t escape at Black Hat 2025: the relentless buz of generative [artificial intelligence] and the sound of Hebrew … in every corridor,” Alexandrovich wrote in part in an accompanying post. Invoking an abbreviation for large language models and referring to one of Israel’s largest cities, the post continued: “The key takeaway? The future of cybersecurity is being written in code, and it seems a significant part of it is being authored in #TelAviv and powered by LLMs. An exciting time to be in the field!”

That LinkedIn page under Alexandrovich’s name has since been deleted.

The Israeli news outlet Ynet reported on Wednesday that the US had detained “an employee of the Israel National Cyber Directorate” for interrogation while he was representing his country at a professional conference. That employee then returned to his hotel and flew back to Israel two days later.

“Israeli officials downplayed the incident, saying it carried ‘no political implications’ and was resolved quickly,” Ynet reported, without naming Alexandrovich or mentioning he had been arrested in connection with a felony charge leveled against him by Nevada law enforcement officials. “The reasons for the questioning remain unclear but may relate to the employee’s conduct.”

The recapture of Grant Hardin (left) and the escaped prisoner in custody on 6 June 2025 about 1.5 miles north-west of Calico Rock prison in Arkansas.
‘Devil in the Ozarks’ spent months planning Arkansas prison escape – report
Read more
Ynet reported early on Saturday evening US eastern time that Alexandrovich was on leave from the Cyber Directorate by “mutual decision”. The outlet also said that the Cyber Directorate claimed the earlier information about Alexandrovich was “accurate based” on what had been provided to the agency.

Mediaite reported that Netanyahu’s office issued a statement denying that the employee in question had even been arrested.

“A state employee who traveled to the US for professional matters was questioned by American authorities during his stay,” the prime minister’s office said. “The employee, who does not hold a diplomatic visa, was not arrested and returned to Israel as scheduled.”

Nevada’s internet crime against children taskforce helmed the operation which resulted in the arrests of Alexandrovich and seven other men in the city of Henderson, which is near Las Vegas. All of the suspects believed they were meeting minors when undercover officers instead confronted and arrested them, police said.

The arrested men were all brought to jail after being taken into custody, said the statement from the Las Vegas metropolitan police department, which participated in the operation alongside local, state and federal law enforcement officials.

Among the other suspects was Las Vegas Redemption church pastor Neal Harrison Creecy, 46, the local CBS affiliate reported. A church official told the station that Creecy resigned shortly after being released from jail on a $10,000 bond.

Under Nevada law, luring a child with a computer for a sex act can carry between one and 10 years in prison.

At this dangerous moment for dissent
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you close this tab, I wanted to ask if you could support the Guardian at this crucial time for journalism in the US.

When the military is deployed to quell overwhelmingly peaceful protest, when elected officials of the opposing party are arrested or handcuffed, when student activists are jailed and deported, and when a wide range of civic institutions – non-profits, law firms, universities, news outlets, the arts, the civil service, scientists – are targeted and penalized by the

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... i-official

Israeli government official arrested in Nevada in internet crimes against children sting
Tom Artiom Alexandrovich was released and returned to Israel after being charged with luring a child for a sex act

Ramon Antonio Vargas
Sat 16 Aug 2025 10.16 EDT
Share
An Israeli government cybersecurity official was reportedly arrested recently by Las Vegas police and other authorities in Nevada who were conducting an undercover investigation aimed at online users seeking to sexually prey on children.

Tom Artiom Alexandrovich, 38, faces felony charges of luring a child with a computer for a sex act, alongside several other suspects who were apprehended during the two-week sting operation, the Las Vegas metropolitan police department said in a statement published on Friday. He has since been released from custody on $10,000 bail after an initial court appearance, records show, and returned to Israel.

As first reported by the news site Mediaite, a publicly posted screenshot of Alexandrovich’s page on the LinkedIn professional networking platform described him as the executive director of the Israel Cyber Directorate, an Israeli government agency under the purview of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. Other information online attributes the same position to Alexandrovich.

The screenshot first reported by Mediaite also showed a post under Alexandrovich’s name alluding to his having been in Las Vegas earlier in August for the Black Hat Briefings, a yearly meeting of cybersecurity professionals.

“Two things you can’t escape at Black Hat 2025: the relentless buz of generative [artificial intelligence] and the sound of Hebrew … in every corridor,” Alexandrovich wrote in part in an accompanying post. Invoking an abbreviation for large language models and referring to one of Israel’s largest cities, the post continued: “The key takeaway? The future of cybersecurity is being written in code, and it seems a significant part of it is being authored in #TelAviv and powered by LLMs. An exciting time to be in the field!”

That LinkedIn page under Alexandrovich’s name has since been deleted.

The Israeli news outlet Ynet reported on Wednesday that the US had detained “an employee of the Israel National Cyber Directorate” for interrogation while he was representing his country at a professional conference. That employee then returned to his hotel and flew back to Israel two days later.

“Israeli officials downplayed the incident, saying it carried ‘no political implications’ and was resolved quickly,” Ynet reported, without naming Alexandrovich or mentioning he had been arrested in connection with a felony charge leveled against him by Nevada law enforcement officials. “The reasons for the questioning remain unclear but may relate to the employee’s conduct.”

The recapture of Grant Hardin (left) and the escaped prisoner in custody on 6 June 2025 about 1.5 miles north-west of Calico Rock prison in Arkansas.
‘Devil in the Ozarks’ spent months planning Arkansas prison escape – report
Read more
Ynet reported early on Saturday evening US eastern time that Alexandrovich was on leave from the Cyber Directorate by “mutual decision”. The outlet also said that the Cyber Directorate claimed the earlier information about Alexandrovich was “accurate based” on what had been provided to the agency.

Mediaite reported that Netanyahu’s office issued a statement denying that the employee in question had even been arrested.

“A state employee who traveled to the US for professional matters was questioned by American authorities during his stay,” the prime minister’s office said. “The employee, who does not hold a diplomatic visa, was not arrested and returned to Israel as scheduled.”

Nevada’s internet crime against children taskforce helmed the operation which resulted in the arrests of Alexandrovich and seven other men in the city of Henderson, which is near Las Vegas. All of the suspects believed they were meeting minors when undercover officers instead confronted and arrested them, police said.

The arrested men were all brought to jail after being taken into custody, said the statement from the Las Vegas metropolitan police department, which participated in the operation alongside local, state and federal law enforcement officials.

Among the other suspects was Las Vegas Redemption church pastor Neal Harrison Creecy, 46, the local CBS affiliate reported. A church official told the station that Creecy resigned shortly after being released from jail on a $10,000 bond.

Under Nevada law, luring a child with a computer for a sex act can carry between one and 10 years in prison.

At this dangerous moment for dissent
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you close this tab, I wanted to ask if you could support the Guardian at this crucial time for journalism in the US.

When the military is deployed to quell overwhelmingly peaceful protest, when elected officials of the opposing party are arrested or handcuffed, when student activists are jailed and deported, and when a wide range of civic institutions – non-profits, law firms, universities, news outlets, the arts, the civil service, scientists – are targeted and penalized by the

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PART ONE

How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime
BY JULIE K. BROWN
NOV. 28, 2018 | EN ESPAÑOL
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... 97825.html

On a muggy October morning in 2007, Miami’s top federal prosecutor, Alexander Acosta, had a breakfast appointment with a former colleague, Washington, D.C., attorney Jay Lefkowitz. It was an unusual meeting for the then-38-year-old prosecutor, a rising Republican star who had served in several White House posts before being named U.S. attorney in Miami by President George W. Bush. Instead of meeting at the prosecutor’s Miami headquarters, the two men — both with professional roots in the prestigious Washington law firm of Kirkland & Ellis — convened at the Marriott in West Palm Beach, about 70 miles away. For Lefkowitz, 44, a U.S. special envoy to North Korea and corporate lawyer, the meeting was critical. His client, Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, 54, was accused of assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls — with the help of young female recruiters — to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day, the Town of Palm Beach police found. Jeffrey Epstein’s waterfront Palm Beach home on El Brillo Way. in addition to his Palm Beach home, Epstein owns a residence in New York City and on a private island in the U.S. Islands. Epstein has been accused of molesting hundreds of young girls in his homes. Emily Michot [email protected] The eccentric hedge fund manager, whose friends included former President Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew, was also suspected of trafficking minor girls, often from overseas, for sex parties at his other homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and the Caribbean, FBI and court records show. Interactive: Sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein was surrounded by powerful people. Here’s a sampling Facing a 53-page federal indictment, Epstein could have ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life. But on the morning of the breakfast meeting, a deal was struck — an extraordinary plea agreement that would conceal the full extent of Epstein’s crimes and the number of people involved. Not only would Epstein serve just 13 months in the county jail, but the deal — called a non-prosecution agreement — essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes, according to a Miami Herald examination of thousands of emails, court documents and FBI records. The pact required Epstein to plead guilty to two prostitution charges in state court. Epstein and four of his accomplices named in the agreement received immunity from all federal criminal charges. 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 accomplices or participants were not identified in the agreement, leaving it open to interpretation whether it possibly referred to other influential people who were having sex with underage girls at Epstein’s various homes or on his plane. 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. This is the story of how Epstein, bolstered by unlimited funds and represented by a powerhouse legal team, was able to manipulate the criminal justice system, and how his accusers, still traumatized by their pasts, believe they were betrayed by the very prosecutors who pledged to protect them. “I don’t think anyone has been told the truth about what Jeffrey Epstein did,’’ said one of Epstein’s victims, Michelle Licata, now 30. “He ruined my life and a lot of girls’ lives. People need to know what he did and why he wasn’t prosecuted so it never happens again.” Now President Trump’s secretary of labor, Acosta, 49, oversees a massive federal agency that provides oversight of the country’s labor laws, including human trafficking. Until he was reported to be eliminated on Thursday, a day after this story posted online, Acosta also had been included on lists of possible replacements for former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who resigned under pressure earlier this month. Acosta did not respond to numerous requests for an interview or answer queries through email. Alex Acosta was the U.S. attorney for Southern Florida when he negotiated an end to the federal investigation of Jeffrey Epstein. Florida International University But court records reveal details of the negotiations and the role that Acosta would play in arranging the deal, which scuttled the federal probe into a possible international sex trafficking operation. Among other things, Acosta allowed Epstein’s lawyers unusual freedoms in dictating the terms of the non-prosecution agreement. “The damage that happened in this case is unconscionable,” said Bradley Edwards, a former state prosecutor who represents some of Epstein’s victims. “How in the world, do you, the U.S. attorney, engage in a negotiation with a criminal defendant, basically allowing that criminal defendant to write up the agreement?” As a result, neither the victims — nor even the judge — would know how many girls Epstein allegedly sexually abused between 2001 and 2005, when his underage sex activities were first uncovered by police. Police referred the case to the FBI a year later, when they began to suspect that their investigation was being undermined by the Palm Beach State Attorney’s Office. NOT A ‘HE SAID, SHE SAID’ “This was not a ‘he said, she said’ situation. This was 50-something ‘shes’ and one ‘he’ — and the ‘shes’ all basically told the same story,’’ said retired Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter, who supervised the police probe. More than a decade later, at a time when Olympic gymnasts and Hollywood actresses have become a catalyst for a cultural reckoning about sexual abuse, Epstein’s victims have all but been forgotten. The women — now in their late 20s and early 30s — are still fighting for an elusive justice that even the passage of time has not made right. Like other victims of sexual abuse, they believe they’ve been silenced by a criminal justice system that stubbornly fails to hold Epstein and other wealthy and powerful men accountable. “Jeffrey preyed on girls who were in a bad way, girls who were basically homeless. He went after girls who he thought no one would listen to and he was right,’’ said Courtney Wild, who was 14 when she met Epstein. Courtney Wild, 30, was a victim of serial sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein beginning at the age of 14. Epstein paid Wild, and many other underage girls, to give him massages, often having them undress and perform sexual acts. Epstein also used the girls as recruiters, paying them to bring him other underage girls. Emily Michot [email protected] Over the past year, the Miami Herald examined a decade’s worth of court documents, lawsuits, witness depositions and newly released FBI documents. Key people involved in the investigation — most of whom have never spoken before — were also interviewed. The Herald also obtained new records, including the full unredacted copy of the Palm Beach police investigation and witness statements that had been kept under seal. The Herald learned that, as part of the plea deal, Epstein provided what the government called “valuable consideration” for unspecified information he supplied to federal investigators. While the documents obtained by the Herald don’t detail what the information was, Epstein’s sex crime case happened just as the country’s subprime mortgage market collapsed, ushering in the 2008 global financial crisis. Records show that Epstein was a key federal witness in the criminal prosecution of two prominent executives with Bear Stearns, the global investment brokerage that failed in 2008, who were accused of corporate securities fraud. Epstein was one of the largest investors in the hedge fund managed by the executives, who were later acquitted. It is not known what role, if any, the case played in Epstein’s plea negotiations. The Herald also identified about 80 women who say they were molested or otherwise sexually abused by Epstein from 2001 to 2006. About 60 of them were located — now scattered around the country and abroad. Eight of them agreed to be interviewed, on or off the record. Four of them were willing to speak on video. The women are now mothers, wives, nurses, bartenders, Realtors, hairdressers and teachers. One is a Hollywood actress. Several have grappled with trauma, depression and addiction. Some have served time in prison. A few did not survive. One young woman was found dead last year in a rundown motel in West Palm Beach. She overdosed on heroin and left behind a young son. As part of Epstein’s agreement, he was required to register as a sex offender, and pay restitution to the three dozen victims identified by the FBI. In many cases, the confidential financial settlements came only after Epstein’s attorneys exposed every dark corner of their lives in a scorched-earth effort to portray the girls as gold diggers. “You beat yourself up mentally and physically,’’ said Jena-Lisa Jones, 30, who said Epstein molested her when she was 14. “You can’t ever stop your thoughts. A word can trigger something. For me, it is the word ‘pure’ because he called me ‘pure’ in that room and then I remember what he did to me in that room.’’ Now, more than a decade later, two unrelated civil lawsuits — one set for trial on Dec. 4 — could reveal more about Epstein’s crimes. The Dec. 4 case, in Palm Beach County state court, involves Epstein and Edwards, whom Epstein had accused of legal misdeeds in representing several victims. The case is noteworthy because it will mark the first time that Epstein’s victims will have their day in court, and several of them are scheduled to testify. Jena Lisa Jones spends time with her 18-month-old son Raymond. Jones says that she is a victim of sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein. Jones says she was just 14 when she was introduced to Epstein and was paid $200 by him to give him a massage at his home. Jones says Epstein told her to take off all of her clothes and that he fondled her during the massage. Epstein pleaded guilty to a single state charge of soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14. Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He served 13 months at the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office Stockade Facility, much of the time outside of the gates on ‘work release.’ Emily Michot [email protected] A second lawsuit, known as the federal Crime Victims’ Rights suit, is still pending in South Florida after a decade of legal jousting. It seeks to invalidate the non-prosecution agreement in hopes of sending Epstein to federal prison. Wild, who has never spoken publicly until now, is Jane Doe No. 1 in “Jane Doe No. 1 and Jane Doe No. 2 vs. the United States of America,” a federal lawsuit that alleges Epstein’s federal non-prosecution agreement was illegal. Federal prosecutors, including Acosta, not only broke the law, the women contend in court documents, but they conspired with Epstein and his lawyers to circumvent public scrutiny and deceive his victims in violation of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act. The law assigns victims a series of rights, including the right of notice of any court proceedings and the opportunity to appear at sentencing. “As soon as that deal was signed, they silenced my voice and the voices of all of Jeffrey Epstein’s other victims,’’ said Wild, now 31. “This case is about justice, not just for us, but for other victims who aren’t Olympic stars or Hollywood stars.’’ In court papers, federal prosecutors have argued that they did not violate the Crime Victims’ Rights Act because no federal charges were ever filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, an argument that was later dismissed by the judge. Despite substantial physical evidence and multiple witnesses backing up the girls’ stories, the secret deal allowed Epstein to enter guilty pleas to two felony prostitution charges. Epstein admitted to committing only one offense against one underage girl, who was labeled a prostitute, even though she was 14, which is well under the age of consent — 18 in Florida. “She was taken advantage of twice — first by Epstein, and then by the criminal justice system that labeled a 14-year-old girl as a prostitute,’’ said Spencer Kuvin, the lawyer who represented the girl. “It’s just outrageous how they minimized his crimes and devalued his victims by calling them prostitutes,’’ said Yasmin Vafa, a human rights attorney and executive director of Rights4Girls, which is working to end the sexual exploitation of girls and young women. “There is no such thing as a child prostitute. Under federal law, it’s called child sex trafficking — whether Epstein pimped them out to others or not. It’s still a commercial sex act — and he could have been jailed for the rest of his life under federal law,” she said. It would be easy to dismiss the Epstein case as another example of how there are two systems of justice in America, one for the rich and one for the poor. But a thorough analysis of the case tells a far more troubling story. A close look at the trove of letters and emails contained in court records provides a window into the plea negotiations, revealing an unusual level of collaboration between federal prosecutors and Epstein’s legal team that even government lawyers, in recent court documents, admitted was unorthodox. Acosta, in 2011, would explain that he was unduly pressured by Epstein’s heavy-hitting lawyers — Lefkowitz, Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, Jack Goldberger, Roy Black, former U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis, Gerald Lefcourt, and Kenneth Starr, the former Whitewater special prosecutor who investigated Bill Clinton’s sexual liaisons with Monica Lewinsky. ‘AVOID THE PRESS’ PLAN That included keeping the deal from Epstein’s victims, emails show. “Thank you for the commitment you made to me during our Oct. 12 meeting,’’ Lefkowitz wrote in a letter to Acosta after their breakfast meeting in West Palm Beach. He added that he was hopeful that Acosta would abide by a promise to keep the deal confidential. “You ... assured me that your office would not ... contact any of the identified individuals, potential witnesses or potential civil claimants and the respective counsel in this matter,’’ Lefkowitz wrote. In email after email, Acosta and the lead federal prosecutor, A. Marie Villafaña, acquiesced to Epstein’s legal team’s demands, which often focused on ways to limit the scandal by shutting out his victims and the media, including suggesting that the charges be filed in Miami, instead of Palm Beach, where Epstein’s victims lived. “On an ‘avoid the press’ note ... I can file the charge in district court in Miami which will hopefully cut the press coverage significantly. Do you want to check that out?’’ Villafaña wrote to Lefkowitz in a September 2007 email. Federal prosecutors identified 36 underage victims, but none of those victims appeared at his sentencing on June 30, 2008, in state court in Palm Beach County. Most of them heard about it on the news — and even then they didn’t understand what had happened to the federal probe that they’d been assured was ongoing. Edwards filed an emergency motion in federal court to block the non-prosecution agreement, but by the time the agreement was unsealed — over a year later — Epstein had already served his sentence and been released from jail. Attorney Brad Edwards is representing several young women who were sexually abused as minors by Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. Edwards Ft. Lauderdale law office is packed with files for the Epstein case. Emily Michot [email protected] “The conspiracy between the government and Epstein was really ‘let’s figure out a way to make the whole thing go away as quietly as possible,’ ’’ said Edwards, who represents Wild and Jane Doe No. 2, who declined to comment for this story. “In never consulting with the victims, and keeping it secret, it showed that someone with money can buy his way out of anything.’’ It was far from the last time Epstein would receive VIP handling. Unlike other convicted sex offenders, Epstein didn’t face the kind of rough justice that child sex offenders do in Florida state prisons. Instead of being sent to state prison, Epstein was housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County jail. And rather than having him sit in a cell most of the day, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office allowed Epstein work release privileges, which enabled him to leave the jail six days a week, for 12 hours a day, to go to a comfortable office that Epstein had set up in West Palm Beach. This was granted despite explicit sheriff’s department rules stating that sex offenders don’t qualify for work release. Jeffrey Epstein, accused of being a serial abuser of underage women, grins for his mugshot. He once compared his alleged crimes to ‘stealing a bagel.’ Florida sex offender registry The sheriff, Ric Bradshaw, would not answer questions, submitted by the Miami Herald, about Epstein’s work release. Neither Epstein nor his lead attorney, Jack Goldberger, responded to multiple requests for comment for this story. During depositions taken as part of two dozen lawsuits filed against him by his victims, Epstein has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, in one instance doing so more than 200 times. In the past, his lawyers have said that the girls lied about their ages, that their stories were exaggerated or untrue and that they were unreliable witnesses prone to drug use. In 2011, Epstein petitioned to have his sex offender status reduced in New York, where he has a home and is required to register every 90 days. In New York, he is classified as a level 3 offender — the highest safety risk because of his likelihood to re-offend. A prosecutor under New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance argued on Epstein’s behalf, telling New York Supreme Court Judge Ruth Pickholtz that the Florida case never led to an indictment and that his underage victims failed to cooperate in the case. Pickholtz, however, denied the petition, expressing astonishment that a New York prosecutor would make such a request on behalf of a serial sex offender accused of molesting so many girls. “I have to tell you, I’m a little overwhelmed because I have never seen a prosecutor’s office do anything like this. I have done so many [sex offender registration hearings] much less troubling than this one where the [prosecutor] would never make a downward argument like this,’’ she said. THE HOUSE ON EL BRILLO The women who went to Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion as girls tend to divide their lives into two parts: life before Jeffrey and life after Jeffrey. Before she met Epstein, Courtney Wild was captain of the cheerleading squad, first trumpet in the band and an A-student at Lake Worth Middle School. After she met Epstein, she was a stripper, a drug addict and an inmate at Gadsden Correctional Institution in Florida’s Panhandle. Wild still had braces on her teeth when she was introduced to him in 2002 at the age of 14. She was fair, petite and slender, blonde and blue-eyed. Wild, who later helped recruit other girls, said Epstein preferred girls who were white, appeared prepubescent and those who were easy to manipulate into going further each time. “By the time I was 16, I had probably brought him 70 to 80 girls who were all 14 and 15 years old. He was involved in my life for years,” said Wild, who was released from prison in October after serving three years on drug charges. The girls — mostly 13 to 16 — were lured to his pink waterfront mansion by Wild and other girls, 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, according to an unredacted copy of the Palm Beach police investigation obtained by the Herald. The lead Palm Beach police detective on the case, Joseph Recarey, said Epstein’s operation worked like a sexual pyramid scheme. Former Palm Beach County Police Detective Joe Recarey was the lead detective on the solicitation-of-minors case against billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. Emily Michot [email protected] “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,’ ’’ Recarey said. During the massage sessions, Recarey said Epstein would molest the girls, paying them premiums for engaging in oral sex and intercourse, and offering them a further bounty to find him more girls. Recarey, in his first interview about the case, said the evidence the department collected to support the girls’ stories was overwhelming, including phone call records, copies of written phone messages from the girls found in Epstein’s trash and Epstein’s flight logs, which showed his private plane in Palm Beach on the days the girls were scheduled to give him massages. Epstein could be a generous benefactor, Recarey said, buying his favored girls gifts. He might rent a car for a young girl to make it more convenient for her to stop by and cater to him. Once, he sent a bucket of roses to the local high school after one of his girls starred in a stage production. The floral-delivery instructions and a report card for one of the girls were discovered in a search of his mansion and trash. Police also obtained receipts for the rental cars and gifts, Recarey said. Epstein counseled the girls about their schooling, and told them he would help them get into college, modeling school, fashion design or acting. At least two of Epstein’s victims told police that they were in love with him, according to the police report. The police report shows how uncannily consistent the girls’ stories were — right down to their detailed descriptions of Epstein’s genitalia. “We had victims who didn’t know each other, never met each other and they all basically independently told the same story,’’ said Reiter, the retired Palm Beach police chief. Michael Reiter is the former Chief of Police in Palm Beach. Reiter was Chief during the investigation of Palm Beach resident Jeffrey Epstein. Emily Michot [email protected] Reiter, also speaking for the first time, said detectives were astonished by the sheer volume of young girls coming and going from his house, the frequency — sometimes several in the same day — and the young ages of the girls. “It started out to give a man a back rub, but in many cases it turned into something far worse than that, elevated to a serious crime, in some cases sexual batteries,’’ he said. Most of the girls said they arrived by car or taxi, and entered the side door, where they were led into a kitchen by a female staff assistant named Sarah Kellen, the report said. A chef might prepare them a meal or offer them cereal. The girls — most from local schools — would then ascend a staircase off the kitchen, up to a large master bedroom and bath. They were met by Epstein, clad in a towel. He would select a lotion from an array lined up on a table, then lie facedown on a massage table, instruct the girl to strip partially or fully, and direct them to massage his feet and backside. Then he would turn over and have them massage his chest, often instructing them to pinch his nipples, while he masturbated, according to the police report. At times, if emboldened, he would try to penetrate them with his fingers or use a vibrator on them. He would go as far as the girls were willing to let him, including intercourse, according to police documents. Sometimes he would instruct a young woman he described as his Yugoslavian sex slave, Nadia Marcinkova, who was over 18, to join in, the girls told Recarey. Epstein often took photographs of the girls having sex and displayed them around the house, the detective said. Once sexually gratified, Epstein would take a shower in his massive bathroom, which the girls described as having a large shower and a hot pink and mint green sofa. Kellen (now Vickers) and Marcinkova, through their attorneys, declined to comment for this story. NEVER ENOUGH One girl told police that she was approached by an Epstein recruiter when she was 16, and was working at the Wellington mall. Over the course of more than a year, she went to Epstein’s house hundreds of times, she said. The girl tearfully told Recarey that she often had sex with Marcinkova — who employed strap-on dildos and other toys — while Epstein watched and choreographed her moves to please himself, according to the police report. Often times, she said, she was so sore after the encounters that she could barely walk, the police report said. But she said she was firm about not wanting to have intercourse with Epstein. One day, however, the girl said that Epstein, unable to control himself, held her down on a massage table and penetrated her, the police report said. The girl, who was 16 or 17 at the time, said that Epstein apologized and paid her $1,000, the police report said. Most of the girls came from disadvantaged families, single-parent homes or foster care. Some had experienced troubles that belied their ages: They had parents and friends who committed suicide; mothers abused by husbands and boyfriends; fathers who molested and beat them. One girl had watched her stepfather strangle her 8-year-old stepbrother, according to court records obtained by the Herald. Many of the girls were one step away from homelessness. “We were stupid, poor children,’’ said one woman, who did not want to be named because she never told anyone about Epstein. At the time, she said, she was 14 and a high school freshman. “We just wanted money for school clothes, for shoes. I remember wearing shoes too tight for three years in a row. We had no family and no guidance, and we were told that we were going to just have to sit in a room topless and he was going to just look at us. It sounded so simple, and was going to be easy money for just sitting there.” The woman, who went to Epstein’s home multiple times, said Epstein didn’t like her because her breasts were too big. The last time she went, she said, one girl came out crying and they were instructed to leave the house and had to pay for their own cab home. Some girls told police they were coached by their peer recruiters to lie to Epstein about their ages and say they were 18. Epstein’s legal team would later claim that even if the girls were under 18, there was no way he could have known. However, under Florida law, ignorance of a sex partner’s age is not a defense for having sex with a minor. Wild said he was well aware of their tender ages — because he demanded they be young. “He told me he wanted them as young as I could find them,’’ she said, explaining that as she grew older and had less access to young girls, Epstein got increasingly angry with her inability to find him the young girls he desired. “If I had a girl to bring him at breakfast, lunch and dinner, then that’s how many times I would go a day. He wanted as many girls as I could get him. It was never enough.’’ THE PYRAMID CRUMBLES Epstein’s scheme first began to unravel in March 2005, when the parents of a 14-year-old girl told Palm Beach police that she had been molested by Epstein at his mansion. The girl reluctantly confessed that she had been brought there by two other girls, and those girls pointed to two more girls who had been there. By the time detectives tracked down one victim, there were two and three more to find. Soon there were dozens. Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane, which is painted a distinctive shade of blue, is parked at Palm Beach International Airport Thursday morning, May 24, 2018. The plane landed at the airport Wednesday May 23, 2018. Emily Michot “We didn’t know where the victims would ever end,” Reiter said. Eventually, the girls told them about still other girls and young women they had seen at Epstein’s house, many of whom didn’t speak English, Recarey said. That led Recarey to suspect that Epstein’s exploits weren’t just confined to Palm Beach. Police obtained the flight logs for his private plane, and found female names and initials among the list of people who flew on the aircraft — including the names of some famous and powerful people who had also been passengers, Recarey said. A newly released FBI report shows that at the time the non-prosecution deal was executed, the agency was interviewing witnesses and victims “from across the United States.” The probe stretched from Florida to New York and New Mexico, records show. The report was released by the FBI in response to a lawsuit filed by Radar Online and was made available on the bureau’s website after the Miami Herald and other news organizations submitted requests, said Daniel Novack, the lawyer who filed the Freedom of Information Act case pro bono. One lawsuit, still pending in New York, alleges that Epstein used an international modeling agency to recruit girls as young as 13 from Europe, Ecuador and Brazil. The girls lived in a New York building owned by Epstein, who paid for their visas, according to the sworn statement of Maritza Vasquez, the one-time bookkeeper for Mc2, the modeling agency. Mike Fisten, a former Miami-Dade police sergeant who was also a homicide investigator and a member of the FBI Organized Crime Task Force, said the FBI had enough evidence to put Epstein away for a long time but was overruled by Acosta. Some of the agents involved in the case were disappointed by Acosta’s bowing to pressure from Epstein’s lawyers, he said. Mike Fisten is a private investigator for victims’ attorneys in the sexual abuse cases against Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. Emily Michot [email protected] “The day that a sitting U.S. attorney is afraid of a lawyer or afraid of a defendant is a very sad day in this country,’’ said Fisten, now a private investigator for Edwards. SUIT/COUNTERSUIT Now, a complex web of litigation could reveal more about Epstein’s crimes. A lawsuit, set for trial Dec. 4 in Palm Beach County, involves the notorious convicted Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein, in whose law firm Edwards once worked. In 2009, Epstein sued Edwards, alleging that Edwards was involved with Rothstein and was using the girls’ civil lawsuits to perpetuate Rothstein’s massive Ponzi operation. But Rothstein said Edwards didn’t know about the scheme, and Epstein dropped the lawsuit. Edwards countersued for malicious prosecution, arguing that Epstein sued him to retaliate for his aggressive representation of Epstein’s victims. Several women who went to Epstein’s home as underage girls are scheduled to testify against him for the first time. Florida state Sen. Lauren Book, a child sex abuse survivor who has lobbied for tough sex offender laws, said Epstein’s case should serve as a tipping point for criminal cases involving sex crimes against children. “Where is the righteous indignation for these women? Where are the protectors? Who is banging down the doors of the secretary of labor, or the judge or the sheriff’s office in Palm Beach County, demanding justice and demanding the right to be heard?’’ Book asked. Assistant U.S. Attorney Villafaña, in court papers, said that prosecutors used their “best efforts’’ to comply with the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, but exercised their “prosecutorial discretion’’ when they chose not to notify the victims. The reasoning went like this: The non-prosecution deal had a restitution clause that provided the girls a chance to seek compensation from Epstein. Had the deal fallen through, necessitating a trial, Epstein’s lawyers might have used the prior restitution clause to undermine the girls’ credibility as witnesses, by claiming they had exaggerated Epstein’s behavior in hopes of cashing in. Acosta has never fully explained why he felt it was in the best interests of the underage girls — and their parents — for him to keep the agreement sealed. Or why the FBI investigation was closed even as, recently released documents show, the case was yielding more victims and evidence of a possible sex-trafficking conspiracy beyond Palm Beach. Upon his nomination by Trump as labor secretary in 2017, Acosta was questioned about the Epstein case during a Senate confirmation hearing. “At the end of the day, based on the evidence, professionals within a prosecutor’s office decided that a plea that guarantees someone goes to jail, that guarantees he register [as a sex offender] generally and guarantees other outcomes, is a good thing,’’ Acosta said of his decision to not prosecute Epstein federally. California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in opposing Acosta for labor secretary, noted that “his handling of a case involving sex trafficking of underage girls when he was a U.S. attorney suggests he won’t put the interests of workers and everyday people ahead of the powerful and well-connected.’’ Marci Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania law professor who is one of the nation’s leading advocates for reforming laws involving sex crimes against children, said what Acosta and other prosecutors did is similar to what the Catholic Church did to protect pedophile priests. “The real crime with the Catholic priests was the way they covered it up and shielded the priests,’’ Hamilton said. “The orchestration of power by men only is protected as long as everybody agrees to keep it secret. This is a story the world needs to hear.’’ This article has been updated to acknowledge Radar Online’s role in securing the release of FBI documents on Jeffrey Epstein and to eliminate a reference to Courtney Wild’s age when she stopped recruiting for Epstein. Wild now says she is not sure how old she was, but her lawyer says she would have been younger than 21, the age she had stated in an interview. More from the series

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PART TWO

Cops worked to put serial sex abuser in prison. Prosecutors worked to cut him a break
BY JULIE K. BROWN
NOV. 28, 2018
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... 10674.html

Palm Beach, Florida November 2004 Jane Doe Michelle Licata climbed a narrow, winding staircase, past walls covered with photographs of naked girls. At the top of the stairwell was a vast master bed and bath, with cream-colored shag carpeting and a hot pink and mint green sofa. The room was dimly lit and very cold. There was a vanity, a massage table and a timer. A silver-haired man wearing nothing but a white towel came into the room. He lay facedown on a massage table, and while talking on a phone, directed Licata to rub his back, legs and feet. Jeffrey Epstein was accused of sexually abusing Michelle Licata and suspected of abusing scores of other middle school and high school-aged girls at his waterfront home in Palm Beach. Emily Michot [email protected] After he hung up, the man turned over and dropped his towel, exposing himself. He told Licata to get comfortable and then, in a firm voice, told her to take off her clothes. At 16, Licata had never before been fully naked in front of anyone. Shaking and panicked, she mechanically pulled off her jeans and stripped down to her underwear. He set the timer for 30 minutes and then reached over and unsnapped her bra. He then began touching her with one hand and masturbating himself with the other. “I kept looking at the timer because I didn’t want to have this mental image of what he was doing,’’ she remembered of the massage. “He kept trying to put his fingers inside me and told me to pinch his nipples. He was mostly saying ‘just do that, harder, harder and do this. …’ ” After he ejaculated, he stood up and walked to the shower, dismissing her as if she had been in history class. It wasn’t long before a lot of Licata’s fellow students at Royal Palm Beach High School had heard about “a creepy old guy” named Jeffrey who lived in a pink waterfront mansion and was paying girls $200 to $300 to give him massages that quickly turned sexual. Eventually, the Palm Beach police, and then the FBI, came knocking on Licata’s door. In the police report, Licata was referred to as a Jane Doe in order to protect her identity as a minor. As seen from the air, the Palm Beach home of registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Pedro Portal [email protected] There would be many Jane Does to follow: Jane Doe No. 3, Jane Doe No. 4, Jane Does 5, 6, 7, 8 — and as the years went by — Jane Does 102 and 103. Long before #MeToo became the catalyst for a women’s movement about sexual assault — and a decade before the fall of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and U.S. Olympic gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar — there was Jeffrey Edward Epstein. Epstein, a multimillionaire hedge fund manager whose friends included a constellation of entertainers, politicians, business titans and royalty, for years lured teenage girls to his Palm Beach mansion as part of a cult-like sex pyramid scheme, police in the town of Palm Beach found. The girls arrived, sometimes by taxi, for trysts at all hours of the day and night. Few were told much more than that they would be paid to give an old man a massage — and that he might ask them to strip down to their underwear or get naked. But what began as a massage often led to masturbation, oral sex, intercourse and other sex acts, police and court records show. The alleged abuse dates back to 2001 and went on for years. In 2007, despite ample physical evidence and multiple witnesses corroborating the girls’ stories, federal prosecutors and Epstein’s lawyers quietly put together a remarkable deal for Epstein, then 54. He agreed to plead guilty to two felony prostitution charges in state court, and in exchange, he and his accomplices received immunity from federal sex-trafficking charges that could have sent him to prison for life. He served 13 months in a private wing of the Palm Beach County stockade. His alleged co-conspirators, who helped schedule his sex sessions, were never prosecuted. The deal, called a federal non-prosecution agreement, was sealed so that no one — not even his victims — could know the full scope of Epstein’s crimes and who else was involved. The U.S. attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, was personally involved in the negotiations, records, letters and emails show. Acosta is now a member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. As U.S. secretary of labor, he has oversight over international child labor laws and human trafficking and had recently been mentioned as a possible successor to former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who resigned under pressure in early November. It was reported on Thursday, a day after this story posted online, that he was no longer in the running. Alexander Acosta, who was U.S. attorney for Southern Florida when law officers brought him the Jeffrey Epstein case, defended his decision to shelve a 53-page draft indictment charging Epstein with sex trafficking. CRISTOBAL HERRERA TNS The Miami Herald analyzed thousands of pages of court records and lawsuits, witness depositions and newly released FBI documents, and also identified more than 80 women who say they were victimized. They are scattered around the country and abroad. Until now, those victims — today in their late 20s and early 30s — have never spoken publicly about how they felt shamed, silenced and betrayed by the very people in the criminal justice system who were supposed to hold Epstein accountable. “How come people who don’t have money get sent to jail — and can’t even make bail — and they have to do their time and sit there and think about what they did wrong? He had no repercussions and doesn’t even believe he did anything wrong,’’ said Licata, now 30. Michelle Licata, 30, is overcome with emotion while discussing her sexual encounters with Jeffrey Epstein. ‘He had no repercussions and doesn’t even believe he did anything wrong,’ she said. Emily Michot [email protected] Licata is among 36 women who were officially identified by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office as victims of Epstein, now 65. But after the FBI case was closed in 2008, witnesses and alleged victims testified in civil court that there were hundreds of girls who were brought to Epstein’s homes, including girls from Europe, Latin America and former Soviet Republic countries. But Acosta and Epstein’s armada of attorneys — Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, Jay Lefkowitz, Gerald Lefcourt, Jack Goldberger, Roy Black, Guy Lewis and former Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr — reached a consensus: Epstein would never serve time in a federal or state prison. Read Next SOUTH FLORIDA Sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein was surrounded by powerful people. Here’s a sampling November 28, 2018 8:00 AM POLICE UNDER PRESSURE There were really just two people willing to risk their careers to go after Epstein: Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter and Detective Joseph Recarey. For Reiter, business tycoon Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t any more formidable than any of the other 8,000 or so wealthy and powerful people living on the island. Police had handled sensational cases involving wealthy residents before — from the murders of heiresses to the rape case involving William Kennedy Smith, of the Kennedy family. The easternmost town in Florida, Palm Beach is a 10.4-square-mile barrier island between the Intracoastal Waterway and the Atlantic Ocean populated by some of the richest people in the country. President Trump has his “winter White House” in Palm Beach, and the town makes news as much for its glitz as it does for its unusual efforts to preserve its well-mannered image, like banning shirtless joggers. But it was a little surprising, even to Reiter, to learn that one of its residents had a revolving door of middle and high school girls coming to his gated compound throughout the day and night. In their first on-the-record media interviews about the case, Reiter and Recarey revealed new details about the investigation, and how they were, in their view, pressured by then-Palm Beach State Attorney Barry Krischer to downgrade the case to a misdemeanor or drop it altogether. Former Palm Beach County Police Detective Joseph Recarey was the lead detective on the solicitation-of-minors case against the multimillionaire Epstein. Emily Michot [email protected] Between March of 2005 — when the case was opened — and seven months later, when police executed a search warrant at Epstein’s home, Recarey had identified 21 possible victims, according to a copy of the unredacted police report obtained by the Herald. By the time police felt they had enough evidence to arrest Epstein on sex charges, they had identified about 35 possible underage victims and were tracking down at least a dozen more, the police report said. “I was surprised at how quickly it snowballed. I thought at some point there would be a last interview, but the next victim would supply me with three or four more names and the next one had three or four names and it just kept getting bigger and bigger,’’ Recarey said. By then, word had gotten back to Epstein from some of the girls that they had been questioned by police. Epstein hired famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz. “Alan Dershowitz flew down and met privately with Krischer,’’ Recarey said. “And the shenanigans that happened, I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of before.’’ Police reports show that Epstein’s private investigators attempted to conduct interviews while posing as cops; that they picked through Reiter’s trash in search of dirt to discredit him; and that the private investigators were accused of following the girls and their families. In one case, the father of one girl claimed he had been run off the road by a private investigator, police and court reports show. Several of the girls said they felt intimidated and frightened by Epstein and Sarah Kellen, the millionaire’s assistant and alleged scheduler of massages, who warned them not to talk to police, according to the police report. Dershowitz, in an interview with the Herald, said he had nothing to do with gathering background on the girls — or in directing anyone to follow the police, or the girls and their families. “I’m not an investigator. My only job was to negotiate and try the case when it comes to trial,’’ he said. He nevertheless convinced Krischer that the girls would not be credible on the witness stand, according to Reiter and Recarey. The defense team’s investigators compiled dossiers on the victims in an effort to show that Epstein’s accusers had troubled pasts. Dershowitz met with Krischer and Recarey, sharing with them the results of an investigation into one of the girls, described by Dershowitz as “an accomplished drama student’’ who hurled profanities at his investigator at “a furious pace.’’ According to Palm Beach police, State Attorney Barry Krischer was initially ready to prosecute a major case against Epstein, but ultimately lost interest. “Our investigation had discovered at least one of her websites and I am enclosing some examples ... the site goes on to detail, including photos, her apparent fascination with marijuana, ’’ Dershowitz wrote in an undated letter to Recarey. He also disputed the claim that one of the defense team’s private investigators had misrepresented himself as a police officer. Recarey stood his ground. “His attorneys showed us a MySpace page where one of the girls was holding a beer in her hand, and they said, ‘oh look, she is underage drinking,’ ’’ Recarey recalled. “Well, tell me what teenager doesn’t? Does that mean she isn’t a victim because she drank a beer? Basically, what you’re telling me is the only victim of a sexual battery could be a nun.’’ Krischer and the lead state prosecutor on the case, Assistant State Attorney Lanna Belohlavek, began to dodge Recarey and Reiter’s phone calls and emails, and they dragged their feet on approving subpoenas, Reiter and Recarey said. “Early on, it became clear that things had changed, from Krischer saying, ‘we’ll put this guy away for life,’ to ‘these are all the reasons why we aren’t going to prosecute this,’ ’’ Reiter said. Krischer, who is now retired and in private practice, did not respond to multiple requests from the Herald for comment. Belohlavek also did not respond to an email sent to her office. “It became apparent to me that some of our evidence was being leaked to Epstein’s lawyers, who began to question everything that we had in our probable cause affidavit,’’ Reiter said. The day of the search on Oct. 20, 2005, they found that most of Epstein’s computer hard drives, surveillance cameras and videos had been removed from the house, leaving loose, dangling wires, according to the police report. But the girls’ description of the house squared with what detectives found, right down to the hot pink couch and the dresser drawer of sex toys in Epstein’s bathroom. Reiter said his own trash was disappearing from his house, as his life was put under Epstein’s microscope. Private investigators hired by Epstein’s lawyers even tracked down Reiter’s grade school teachers, the former chief said. Questions were raised about donations that Epstein had made to the police department, even though Reiter had returned one of the donations shortly after the investigation began. Recarey, meanwhile, said he began to take different routes to and from work, and even switched vehicles because he knew he was being tailed. “At some point it became like a cat-and-mouse game. I would stop at a red light and go. I knew they were there, and they knew I knew they were there. I was concerned about my kids because I didn’t know if it was someone that they hired just out of prison that would hurt me or my family,’’ Recarey said. Despite relentless political pressure, Reiter and Recarey soldiered on, and their determination yielded evidence that supported most of the girls’ allegations, the former cops said. They had phone records that showed Epstein and his assistant, Kellen, had called many of the girls. Epstein’s flight logs showed that the calls were made when Epstein was in Palm Beach. They obtained dozens of message pads from his home that read like a who’s who of famous people, including magician David Copperfield and Donald Trump, an indication of Epstein’s vast circle of influential friends. There were also messages from girls, and their phone numbers matched those of many of the girls Recarey had interviewed, Recarey said. They read: “Courtney called, she can come at 4,’’ or “Tanya can’t come at 7 p.m. tomorrow because she has soccer practice.’’ They also found naked photographs of underage girls in Epstein’s closet, Recarey said. There were also witnesses: Two of Epstein’s butlers gave Recarey sworn interviews, confirming that young girls had been coming and going at the house. One of the butlers, Alfredo Rodriguez, told Recarey that when he was tasked with cleaning up the master bath after Epstein’s sessions with the girls, he often discovered sex toys. Once, he accidentally stumbled on a high school girl, whom he identified, sleeping naked in Epstein’s spa, he testified in a 2009 court deposition. Rodriguez said he was given the job of paying the girls, telling Recarey that he was “a human ATM machine’’ because he was ordered by Epstein to keep $2,000 on him at all times. He was also assigned to buy the girls gifts. Rodriguez gave Recarey copies of pages from a book that Epstein and his staff kept with the names and phone numbers for many of the Palm Beach County girls, Recarey said. Rodriguez, however, held onto the bulk of Epstein’s “little black book,’’ and in November 2009 tried to sell it for $50,000 to an undercover FBI agent posing as a victim’s lawyer. He was arrested and sentenced in 2012 to federal prison, and died three years later following an illness. The book — listing personal phone numbers for a cavalcade of Epstein’s powerful friends and celebrities — eventually became public as part of a civil lawsuit. It listed more than 100 female names and phone numbers under the headings “massage’’ in every city where Epstein had homes. In May 2006, Recarey drew up probable cause affidavits, charging Epstein, two of his assistants and one recruiter with sex-related crimes. Instead, Krischer took what Recarey said was the unusual step of referring the case to a state grand jury. Epstein was indicted in state court on a minor charge of solicitation of prostitution. Recarey said Krischer told him he didn’t believe Epstein’s accusers, and only two of them were called before the state grand jury investigating the case — even though police had lined up more than a dozen girls and witnesses at that time. Believing that the case had been tainted, Reiter — that same month, May 2006 — took a very public stance against Krischer, writing a letter, which was released to the news media, calling on Krischer to remove himself from the case. The chief then referred it to the FBI, which opened its own investigation in July 2006, FBI records show. Reiter said he was effectively blackballed in some Palm Beach circles as a result of going over Krischer’s head, and their relationship, once strong, would never be the same. Reiter has no regrets about what he did. “There are challenges here that don’t exist in a lot of other places because of the affluence in the community, but the only way I could approach this case was that none of that matters. The truth is still the truth. The facts are the facts. Everybody is treated the same.’’ In the years that followed, several of the victims obtained lawyers and filed civil lawsuits against Epstein. About two dozen lawsuits were filed, starting in 2008. The early cases were particularly brutal for his victims, the court records show. The girls faced fierce grilling from another pack of Epstein’s civil attorneys, who questioned them about their boyfriends, drinking, drug use, social media posts, their parents and even their medical histories. One girl was asked about her abortions, and her parents, who were Catholic and knew nothing about the abortions, were also deposed and questioned. Licata said the questions from Epstein’s civil lawyers were so intimate that she became paranoid that people were following her. “His lawyers were just in my life inside and out. They asked if I had a baby, if I had an abortion, ‘did you sleep with 30 different guys’ and ‘do you think that played a part?’ I said, ‘you’re going to come at me like that when you represent a guy who is doing this to hundreds of girls? How do you sleep at night?’ ” BROOKLYN TO PALM BEACH Jeffrey Epstein was born in Brooklyn, the son of a New York parks department worker. In one of several depositions he gave as part of the lawsuits filed against him, he said he attended the Cooper Union school for the advancement of science and art and then studied physics at New York University. But he never obtained a degree, instead going on to teach at the Dalton School, an elite K-12 private academy on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Various news profiles over the years have speculated about how he made his vast fortune, calling him an “International Moneyman of Mystery’’ and “The Talented Mr. Epstein.’’ He then struck out on his own, opening J. Epstein & Co. His fortunes improved when he became a financial advisor for Leslie Wexner, founder of The Limited stores and owner of Victoria’s Secret brands. Later, Epstein would boast that he would manage the portfolios of only those clients who had $1 billion or more.This much is known: He got his start on Wall Street after being offered a job by the father of one of his students. At Bear Stearns, he became a derivative specialist, applying complex math formulas and computer algorithms to evaluate financial data and trends. Through Wexner, he acquired a seven-story stone mansion that is considered the largest private residence in Manhattan — a 21,000-square-foot fortress with heated sidewalks that spans the entire block on 71st Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues. He also owns a 10,000-acre ranch, named “Zorro,’’ in New Mexico, a private island called “Little St. James’’ in the Virgin Islands, the $13 million house in Palm Beach, a Gulfstream jet and, at one point, owned a Boeing 727. Virginia Roberts says she was used as a sex slave for Jeffrey Epstein for years starting at the age of 16. Roberts says that Epstein also lent her out to some of his wealthy, powerful acquaintances for sex. Courtesy of Virginia Roberts He has never been in the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans, largely because the magazine has never been able to determine the source or the size of his wealth. He has been dogged by questions about his financial dealings. A former business partner, Steven Hoffenberg, sued him in 2016, claiming that Epstein was the mastermind behind a $500 million Ponzi scheme that Hoffenberg was imprisoned for in 1995. Hoffenberg served 18 years for the scam, but he later dropped the lawsuit against Epstein. In August, two of Hoffenberg’s former investors rekindled the lawsuit against Epstein, but the case was dropped in October. Epstein and his associate, British-born socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, were also accused in a 2015 federal civil suit of organizing underage sex parties on his private plane, nicknamed “The Lolita Express,’’ and at Epstein’s various homes. Maxwell, who has never been charged with wrongdoing, has denied allegations made in the lawsuit that she was Epstein’s “madam.’’ The suit, filed by victim Virginia Roberts, was settled in 2017. It was Epstein’s contacts with powerful and famous people that first propelled him into the public spotlight. In 2002, he flew former President Bill Clinton, actor Kevin Spacey, comedian Chris Tucker and others to South Africa on his private jet as part of a fact-finding AIDS mission in support of the Clinton Foundation. But Epstein, a Clinton donor who contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and causes, realized that his Democratic connections weren’t going to help him in 2006, when the federal prosecutor was Acosta, a conservative Republican appointed during the George W. Bush administration. ENTER KENNETH STARR Epstein’s tactic: hire the most aggressive and politically connected lawyers that his money could buy. At the top of his list: Kenneth Starr, a Republican icon because of his pursuit of Bill Clinton during the Whitewater investigation, which led to the impeachment (but not conviction) of the president after it was revealed he’d had sex with a young White House intern. Like Acosta, Starr had worked at the prestigious law firm Kirkland & Ellis. Epstein also tapped Jay Lefkowitz, also of Kirkland, who worked as a domestic policy advisor and later as a special envoy to North Korea during the George W. Bush presidency. Kenneth Starr, who as independent counsel built an impeachment case against President Bill Clinton for having sex with an intern, joined the legal team fighting to keep Epstein out of prison. ERIC GAY AP Epstein also hired Bruce Reinhart, then an assistant U.S. attorney in South Florida, now a U.S. magistrate. He left the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Jan. 1, 2008, and went to work representing Epstein’s employees on Jan. 2, 2008, court records show. In 2011, Reinhart was named in the Crime Victims’ Rights Act lawsuit, which accused him of violating Justice Department policies by switching sides, implying that he leveraged inside information about Epstein’s investigation to curry favor with Epstein. Reinhart, in a sworn declaration attached to the CVRA case, denied the allegation, saying he did not participate in Epstein’s criminal case and “never learned any confidential, non-public information about the Epstein matter.’’ The U.S. Attorney’s Office has since disputed that, saying in court papers that he did possess confidential information about the case. Contacted for this story, Reinhart, in an email, said he never represented Epstein — only Epstein’s pilots; his scheduler, Sarah Kellen; and Nadia Marcinkova, described by some victims as Epstein’s sex slave. Reinhart also pointed out that a complaint filed against him by victims’ lawyer Paul Cassell was dismissed by the Justice Department. Bruce Reinhart left the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Jan. 1, 2008, and went to work representing Epstein’s employees on Jan. 2, 2008, court records show. PR NEWSWIRE That same year, 2011, more girls continued to come forward, including Roberts, who claimed in a British tabloid story that Epstein directed her — while she was underage by Florida standards — to have sex, not only with him, but with other powerful men, including his attorney, Alan Dershowitz, and Prince Andrew. Dershowitz and Andrew denied her claims, but after she filed a sworn affidavit in federal court in Miami, the ensuing news media firestorm forced Acosta, then dean of the law school at Florida International University, to explain why he’d declined to prosecute Epstein. In a written, public statement on March 20, 2011, Acosta asserted that the deal he struck with Epstein’s lawyers was harsher than it would have been had the case remained with the state prosecutor, Krischer, who favored charging Epstein with only a misdemeanor prostitution violation. Acosta also described what he called a “year-long assault’’ on prosecutors by Epstein’s “army of legal superstars’’ who, he said, investigated individual prosecutors and their families, looking for “personal peccadilloes’’ to disqualify them from Epstein’s case. Dershowitz, in an interview, denied that Epstein’s lawyers would ever investigate prosecutors. Documents nevertheless show that Acosta not only buckled under pressure from Epstein’s lawyers, but he and other prosecutors worked with them to contain the case, even as the FBI was uncovering evidence of victims and witnesses in other states, FBI and federal court documents show. A 53-page federal indictment had been prepared in 2007, and subpoenas were served on several of Epstein’s employees, compelling them to testify before a federal grand jury. The court records reveal that emails began to fly back and forth between prosecutors and Epstein’s legal team. Those emails show that federal prosecutors kept acquiescing to Epstein’s demands. Prosecutors allowed Epstein’s lawyers to dictate the terms of each deal that they drew up, and repeatedly backed down on deadlines, so that the defense essentially controlled the pace of the negotiations, the emails and letters show. It’s clear, from emails and other records, that prosecutors spent a lot of time figuring out a way to settle the case with the least amount of scandal. Instead of charging Epstein with a sex offense, prosecutors considered witness tampering and obstruction charges, and misdemeanors that would allow Epstein to secretly plead guilty in Miami instead of in Palm Beach County, where most of the victims lived, thereby limiting media exposure and making it less likely for victims to appear at the sentencing. “I’ve been spending some quality time with Title 18 [the U.S. criminal code] looking for misdemeanors,’’ the lead prosecutor, A. Marie Villafaña, wrote to Epstein’s lawyers on Sept. 13, 2007, adding that she was trying to find “a factual basis’’ for one or more non-sex-related crimes to charge him with. The email chain shows that prosecutors sometimes communicated with the defense team using private emails, and that their correspondence referenced discussions that they wanted to have by phone or in person, so that there would be no paper trail. “It’s highly unusual and raises suspicions of something unethical happening when you see emails that say ‘call me, I don’t want to put this in writing.’ There’s no reason to worry about putting something in writing if there’s nothing improper or unethical in the case,’’ said former federal prosecutor Francey Hakes, who worked in the Justice Department’s crimes against children unit. On Sept. 24, 2007, another agreement was reached (See update at end of story), but Epstein still wasn’t happy with it, emails show. Lefkowitz continued to pressure the U.S. Attorney’s Office to keep the agreement secret, even though under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, prosecutors were required to inform the victims that a plea deal had been signed. “We ... object to your sending a letter to the alleged victims,” Lefkowitz wrote on Nov. 28. “... Any such letter would immediately be leaked to the press, your actions will only have the effect of injuring Mr. Epstein and promoting spurious civil litigation directed at him. We also request that if your office believes that it must send a letter to go to the alleged victims ... it should happen only after Mr. Epstein has entered his plea.’’ By December, Epstein had still not agreed to a date for his plea hearing, and was technically in violation of the September agreement, which required him to appear in court by November, Acosta noted in a letter to Kenneth Starr in December 2007. “The [U.S. attorneys] who have been negotiating with defense counsel have for some time complained to me regarding the tactics used by the defense team,’’ Acosta wrote. “It appears to them that as soon as resolution is reached on one issue, defense counsel finds ways to challenge the resolution collaterally. ... Some in our office are deeply concerned that defense counsel will continue to mount collateral challenges to provisions to the agreement, even after Mr. Epstein has entered his guilty plea and thus rendered the agreement difficult, if not impossible, to unwind.’’ And that’s exactly what happened. Villafaña frequently showed her frustration. “I thought we had worked very well together in resolving this dispute. … I feel that I bent over backwards to keep in mind the effect that the agreement would have on Mr. Epstein,’’ Villafaña wrote to Epstein attorney Lefkowitz on Dec. 13, 2007. Marie Villafaña, the assistant U.S. attorney directly in charge of the Epstein case, frequently expressed frustration with the tactics of Epstein’s legal team. By then the deal had been signed for two months, and Jeffrey Sloman, Acosta’s top assistant, told Lefkowitz he intended to begin notifying Epstein’s victims. An indignant Lefkowitz wrote to Acosta, objecting strenuously, and reminding him of his earlier pledge not to have his staff contact the young women. As the months went on, with the agreement still in limbo, federal prosecutors once again began to prepare indictments against Epstein, court records show. The FBI investigation briefly resumed, and additional witnesses were interviewed in New York and New Mexico, the records show. In January 2008, several Epstein victims were sent letters informing them that the FBI investigation was “ongoing’’ as negotiations to finalize the plea bargain continued behind the scenes. Starr finally appealed to the Justice Department in Washington, challenging federal jurisdiction of the case, but in May 2008, the Justice Department affirmed Acosta’s right to prosecute. ‘STILL AFRAID OF EPSTEIN’ In recent court filings, the government was forced to answer questions about its negotiations, finally admitting in 2013 that federal prosecutors had backed down under relentless pressure by Epstein’s attorneys. “The government admits that, at least in part as a result of objections lodged by Epstein’s lawyers to victim notifications, the [United States Attorney’s Office] reevaluated its obligations to provide notification to victims and Jane Doe #1 was thus not told that the USAO had entered into a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein until after it was signed,’’ wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Dexter Lee. Said Hakes, the former federal prosecutor: “I have never heard of a case where federal prosecutors consult with a defense attorney before they send out standard victim notification letters. To negotiate what the letters would say and whether they would be sent at all suggest that the victims’ rights were violated multiple times.’’ Starr’s aggressive advocacy for Epstein against allegations of improper sexual behavior was in stark contrast to the path he took investigating then-President Clinton. The Starr Report, the summary of his findings in the Whitewater investigation, which started as a probe of a land deal gone sour and veered into an investigation of sexual misconduct, savaged the president for his involvement with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and was the basis for impeachment. Starr himself would face criticism in 2016 — he stepped down as president of Baylor University amid allegations that he and other university officials mishandled sexual assault allegations brought by female students against members of the school’s football team. The Herald reached out to Starr, through certified letter and through a spokesman for his current law firm, the Lanier Firm, but did not receive a response for this story. Palm Beach police detective Recarey, one of the most highly decorated officers on the Palm Beach Police Department, called the Epstein case the most troubling of his 23-year career. “Some of the victims were — and still are — afraid of Epstein,’’ he said as part of a series of interviews with the Herald earlier this year. Privately, Reiter and Recarey said, they held onto a hope that Epstein would be brought to trial someday, but they said that that notion had faded. “I always hoped that the plea would be thrown out and that these teenage girls, who were labeled as prostitutes by prosecutors, would get to finally shed that label and see him go to prison where he belongs,’’ Recarey said. Recarey died in May after a brief illness. He was 50 years old. This story has been corrected to remove a quotation from Jay Lefkowitz, Jeffrey Epstein’s attorney, that was presented out of sequence. ---- Update: At a news conference on July 9, 2019, announcing his resignation as labor secretary over the Epstein matter, Alexander Acosta defended his handling of the case, noting that Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement had been signed on Sept. 24, 2007, and that there were no changes and no outstanding issues to discuss at his October meeting at the Palm Beach Marriott with Epstein attorney Jay Lefkowitz. Letters show this was not the case. On Oct. 10, 2007, two days before the Oct. 12 meeting, Lefkowitz wrote an eight-page letter to Acosta, labeled as “confidential, for settlement purposes” and citing “serious disagreements.” In it, Lefkowitz outlined a number of what he called “open issues.’‘ Among the issues he listed was victim notification, which he said would violate the agreement that was signed, an addendum to the agreement involving civil restitution and a liability waiver. “Alex, as you know, when Mr. Epstein signed the Agreement, he did so in order to reach finality with your office and with the express representation that the federal investigation against him would cease. To that end, I would like your assurance that after you and I agree to the issues raised in this letter, that will be the end of the United States’ involvement barring a willful breech of the agreement. Specifically, the Government or any of its agents will not make any further communications to the identified individuals,’‘ which referred to the victims. He wrote: “I look forward to resolving these open issues with you.”

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Part Three

Even from jail, sex abuser manipulated the system. His victims were kept in the dark
BY JULIE K. BROWN
NOV. 28, 2018
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... 94920.html

A decade before #MeToo, a multimillionaire sex offender from Florida got the ultimate break.

Palm Beach County Courthouse
June 30, 2008

Jeffrey Edward Epstein appeared at his sentencing dressed comfortably in a blue blazer, blue shirt, jeans and gray sneakers. His attorney, Jack Goldberger, was at his side.

At the end of the 68-minute hearing, the 55-year-old silver-haired financier — accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls — was fingerprinted and handcuffed, just like any other criminal sentenced in Florida.

But inmate No. W35755 would not be treated like other convicted sex offenders in the state of Florida, which has some of the strictest sex offender laws in the nation.

Ten years before the #MeToo movement raised awareness about the kid-glove handling of powerful men accused of sexual abuse, Epstein’s lenient sentence and his extraordinary treatment while in custody are still the source of consternation for the victims he was accused of molesting when they were minors.

Beginning as far back as 2001, Epstein lured a steady stream of underage girls to his Palm Beach mansion to engage in nude massages, masturbation, oral sex and intercourse, court and police records show. The girls — mostly from disadvantaged, troubled families — were recruited from middle and high schools around Palm Beach County. Epstein would pay the girls for massages and offer them further money to bring him new girls every time he was at his home in Palm Beach, according to police reports.

The girls, now in their late 20s and early 30s, allege in a series of federal civil lawsuits filed over the past decade that Epstein sexually abused hundreds of girls, not only in Palm Beach, but at his homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and in the Caribbean.

In 2007, the FBI had prepared a 53-page federal indictment charging Epstein with sex crimes that could have put him in federal prison for life. But then-Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta signed off on a non-prosecution agreement, which was negotiated, signed and sealed so that no one would know the full scope of Epstein’s crimes. The indictment was shelved, never to be seen again.

Epstein instead pleaded guilty to lesser charges in state court, and was required to register as a sex offender. He was sentenced to 18 months incarceration. But Epstein — who had a long list of powerful, politically connected friends — didn’t go to state prison like most sex offenders in Florida. Instead, the multimillionaire was assigned to a private wing of the Palm Beach County stockade, where he was able to hire his own security detail. Even then, he didn’t spend much time in a cell. He was allowed to go to his downtown West Palm Beach office for work release, up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, records show.

Sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein was surrounded by powerful people. Here’s a sampling
November 28, 2018
8:00 AM

He was permitted to hire his own private psychologist for his required sex-offender counseling, and after his release from jail, his subsequent year of probation under house arrest was filled with trips on his corporate jet to Manhattan and to his home in the U.S. Virgin Islands — all approved by the courts with no objections from the state.

On the morning of his sentencing in 2008, none of Epstein’s victims were in the courtroom to protest his soft jail term or the unusual provisions of his incarceration and probation — and that was by design.

Emails and letters contained in court filings reveal the cozy, behind-the-scenes dealings between federal prosecutors and Epstein’s indomitable legal team during the run-up to his federal plea deal, as they discussed ways to minimize his criminal charges and avoid informing the girls about the details of the deal until after the case was resolved.

That arrangement benefited Epstein in a number of ways. Unlike other high-profile sex crime cases, federal prosecutors agreed to keep his sentencing quiet, thereby limiting media coverage. His underage victims — identified in FBI documents — weren’t told about the plea deal so they weren’t in court, where they could voice their objections and possibly sway the judge to give Epstein a harsher sentence or reject the agreement altogether.

Most important, Epstein’s crimes would be reduced to felony prostitution charges, giving him the ability to argue that the girls weren’t victims at all — they were prostitutes.

Four accomplices named in Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement — Nadia Marcinkova, Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross and Lesley Groff — were also given immunity from federal prosecution. Marcinkova was a young girl when Epstein brought her from Yugoslavia to live with him. Several victims told police that she was involved in orgies with Epstein and underage girls. Ross, Groff and Kellen, now known by her married name, Vickers, were schedulers who arranged his underage sex sessions, according to the FBI and police.

Marcinkova and Kellen, through their attorneys, declined to comment for this story. The Herald was unsuccessful in reaching Ross and Groff.

Acosta, who is now President Donald Trump’s secretary of labor, told lawmakers last year at his confirmation hearing that he did not know that Epstein would receive such liberal treatment while incarcerated. But court records show that federal prosecutors under his authority acquiesced to many of Epstein’s demands, including that he not go to federal or state prison.

“I can’t remember how I found out that he had taken a plea,’’ said Courtney Wild, identified by the FBI as one of more than three dozen underage girls — some of them as young as 13 — who had been molested by Epstein at his waterfront estate between 2001 and 2005.

“We were purposefully misled into believing that his sentencing [in state court] had nothing to do with the federal crimes he committed against me or the other girls.’’

Epstein, now 65, was released in 2009 after serving 13 months.

Wild, who was 14 when she met Epstein, is suing the federal government, alleging that prosecutors kept her and other victims in the dark as part of a conspiracy to give Epstein — described in the lawsuit as “a powerful, politically connected multimillionaire” — one of the most lenient deals for a serial child sex offender in history.

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Courtney Wild, 30, was a victim of serial sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein beginning at the age of 14. Epstein paid Wild, and many other underage girls, to give him massages, often having them undress and perform sexual acts. Epstein also used the girls as recruiters, paying them to bring him other underage girls. Emily Michot [email protected]

Now 31, Wild is Jane Doe No. 1 in “Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 vs. the United States,” which seeks to overturn Epstein’s plea agreement on the grounds that it was executed in violation of the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act. The measure affords crime victims a series of rights, including to confer with prosecutors and to be notified about plea negotiations and sentencing.

That lawsuit — and an unrelated state court case scheduled for trial on Dec. 4 — could expose more about Epstein’s crimes, as well as who else was involved and whether there was any undue influence that tainted the federal case.

Some of Epstein’s victims will finally have an opportunity to testify for the first time as part of the Dec. 4 case in state court in Palm Beach County. It pits Fort Lauderdale attorney Bradley Edwards against Epstein, who had accused Edwards of malfeasance in his representation of several victims.

Jack Scarola, the attorney representing Edwards, said Epstein should be held accountable for his unrelenting attacks against Edwards — as well as others who were involved in his case.

“We are going to demonstrate through this case that no one — no matter how much money they have — can abuse children and then attempt to bully those who come to the defense of children,’’ said Scarola, a former state prosecutor.

FLORIDA AND BEYOND

Few people had as much insight into Epstein’s lifestyle — and its international reach — as Virginia Roberts. By age 16, Roberts had lived a life that was beyond that of most high school girls.

At 11, she says, she was sexually molested by a family friend. At 12, she was smoking pot and skipping school. At 13, she was in and out of foster homes, and at 14, she was on the street.

In Miami, the runaway became a captive of a 65-year-old sex trafficker, Ron Eppinger. For months, she says, she was sexually abused, kept in an apartment and pimped out to pedophiles. After his indictment in 2000 on trafficking charges, Roberts returned to West Palm Beach and tried to heal.

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Virginia Roberts says she was used as a sex slave for Jeffrey Epstein for years starting at the age of 16. Roberts says that Epstein also lent her out to some of his wealthy, powerful acquaintances for sex. Courtesy of Virginia Roberts

That summer, when Roberts was 16, she said her father helped her get a job as a locker room attendant at the spa at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, records show. Her father worked at the resort as a maintenance man.

There she said she met Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein friend and socialite daughter of the late British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell. She offered Roberts an opportunity to become a massage therapist, working for Epstein.

In a sworn court affidavit and in a recent interview with the Herald, Roberts described how Epstein and Maxwell began grooming her — not just to perform massages, but to sexually pleasure them and others.

“It started with one and it trickled into two and so on,’’ Roberts told the Herald. “And before you know it, I’m being lent out to politicians and academics and royalty.’’

Roberts, too, was ordered to find Epstein girls — the younger, the better — by trolling areas where teenagers congregated, such as shopping malls, to lure girls to whatever residence Epstein was staying in at the time, she told the Herald.

She began to travel with Epstein and Maxwell to Epstein’s other homes, in New York, New Mexico and the U.S. Virgin Islands — and her trips are documented in flight logs that frequently list her name or her initials as a passenger, court records show. “

His appetite was insatiable. He wanted new girls, fresh, young faces every single day — that was just the sickness that he had,’’ Roberts said.

Neither Epstein nor his lead attorney, Goldberger, responded to requests for comment.

Roberts alleges that Epstein had cameras throughout his homes and said he liked her to tell him about the sexual peccadilloes of various important men she had sex with.

“Epstein and Maxwell also got girls for Epstein’s friends and acquaintances. Epstein specifically told me that the reason for him doing this was so that they would ‘owe him,’ they would ‘be in his pocket,’ and he would ‘have something on them,’ ” Roberts said in a court affidavit. “I understood him to mean that when someone was in his pocket, they owed him favors.’’

Roberts elaborated in her interview with the Herald, saying that Epstein had access to girls through a modeling agency that recruited them from overseas.

Epstein, who was close to Les Wexner, the owner of Victoria’s Secret, often talked about his connections to people in the modeling, fashion and acting industries, Roberts told the Herald.

“He [Epstein] would tell the girls, ‘Hey, I will give you a modeling contract if you go have sex with this man [whichever acquaintance Epstein designated],’ ’’ she said.

Roberts’ story about the modeling agency is supported, to a degree, by the sworn statement of a Miami woman named Maritza Vasquez, who was later interviewed in New York by an FBI agent from Miami. Vasquez worked as a bookkeeper for Mc2, owned by Epstein associate Jean-Luc Brunel. He employed scouts in South America, Europe and the former Soviet Union to find him models to bring to the United States, Vasquez said in a 2010 sworn court deposition obtained by the Herald.

Vasquez stated in the deposition that from 2003 to 2006 she handled all the finances and payroll for the agency, including a bank transaction involving Epstein. She said Epstein invested $1 million in Mc2.

The models were often very young — 13, 14 and 15 — and some of them were housed in apartments at 301 E. 66th St. in New York, a building purportedly owned by Epstein, the deposition said.

Epstein didn’t charge the girls rent, Vasquez said, but Brunel charged them $1,000 a month, with four of them at a time sharing one apartment. The girls who were the youngest and most beautiful stayed at the 66th Street apartments, which were more luxurious than the other apartments that were used to house models who were not as young and desirable, she said.

Vasquez once let one of the models, who was 14, stay overnight with her after the girl ran into trouble with police for trying to get into a Manhattan nightclub. Vasquez also testified that she helped a lawyer obtain visas for the foreign models, and assisted with their transportation to and from modeling assignments and parties.

Vasquez said that even though the agency employed 200 to 300 models, the company didn’t make any money and Brunel was always broke. Brunel would later sue Epstein, alleging that the financier’s sex scandal had caused his business to fail, but the suit was eventually dropped.

Vasquez testified it wasn’t unusual for the agency to send girls to an assignment with a wealthy client for $100,000 or more, but the girl wouldn’t be paid the full amount — or anything at all — if she refused to be “molested.’’

Vasquez considered herself a mother figure and often coached the youngest girls to stick to the 9-to-5 modeling assignments because she didn’t think it was appropriate for them to be having sex.

She said she met Epstein only once, but she often helped arrange for girls — many of them underage — to be sent to his homes in New York, Palm Beach and his island in the Caribbean for parties. She heard salacious rumors about Epstein’s parties, but testified she had no firsthand knowledge about whether they involved sex.

Vasquez said that she was questioned by the FBI and she tried to tell agents where to look for evidence.

Vasquez was eventually let go from the agency after she was accused of stealing money — money she claims was given to her by Brunel. Vasquez said she was placed on probation for the theft. She never heard from the FBI about Epstein again.

The Herald was unsuccessful in reaching Brunel through his former attorney.

In a written statement released in 2015, Brunel denied any involvement in trafficking underage models.

“I strongly deny having participated, neither directly nor indirectly, in the actions Mr. Jeffrey Epstein is being accused of,” he said. “I strongly deny having committed any illicit act or any wrongdoing in the course of my work as a scouter or model agencies manager.”

TOO OLD AT 19

In 2003, when Roberts turned 19, it was clear that Epstein had lost interest because she was too old for him, she said. She convinced him to pay for her to get training to become a real professional masseuse so that she could move on.

In an interview, she explained that Epstein arranged for her to take a class in Thailand, but it came with a hitch: She said she was instructed to pick up a Thai girl he had arranged to come to the States.

Roberts, who showed the Herald the written instructions for the rendezvous, never picked up the girl because Roberts met a man on the trip who would become her husband. The couple married and moved to Australia, where they currently live.

In 2007 — at the same time the FBI was investigating Epstein — Roberts, pregnant with her second child, said she unexpectedly received phone calls from Maxwell and Epstein. She said they were worried that she had told police about them. She assured them she had not spoken to anyone, she said.

Shortly afterward, Roberts said, she was contacted by someone who claimed to be with the FBI. But she was afraid to tell that person details, fearing it was really an Epstein associate posing as an FBI agent.

That agent, identified in court papers as Timothy Slater, confirmed that he and the other agent on the case, Nesbitt Kuyrkendall, called Roberts in January or February 2007. In a sworn statement, Slater said he informed Roberts that they suspected she was a victim of Epstein’s.

The agent said Roberts answered basic questions, but became uncomfortable and “asked that I not bother her again.’’

Roberts said the agent didn’t try too hard to convince her to talk, and she was surprised when he hung up after asking her a few graphic questions about her sex life. She said she was suspicious, but would have cooperated had the FBI talked to her in person and explained why they were asking about Epstein.

“I was still scared to death,’’ Roberts said. “Jeffrey used to tell me that he owned the entire Palm Beach Police Department. I just didn’t want my family harmed.’’

She nevertheless was listed by federal prosecutors as one of Epstein’s Palm Beach victims.

As the years went by and Roberts had a daughter, she would be haunted by a fear that Epstein was still taking advantage of young girls. In 2011, she went public in a paid interview with a British tabloid, the Daily Mail, asserting that she had had sex with Prince Andrew, one of Epstein’s friends, several times when she was a teen.

In her 2015 affidavit, she discussed in detail some of her alleged sex encounters with the prince and Epstein’s other friends, including lawyer Alan Dershowitz. Edwards included the affidavit in the court file as part of the Jane Does’ Crime Victims’ Rights Act case, at which time it became public.

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Virginia Roberts poses for a photo with Prince Andrew. Roberts reports that she was lent out to Prince Andrew when she was a teenage sex slave for Palm Beach millionaire Jeffrey Epstein. Roberts says she was used as a sex slave for Jeffrey Epstein for years starting at the age of 16. Roberts says that Epstein regularly lent her out to some of his wealthy, powerful acquaintances for sex. Courtesy of Virginia Roberts

In the affidavit, Roberts claimed that Epstein and Maxwell directed her to have sex with Andrew and Dershowitz and others. She had sex with Andrew three times, she alleged — once in London, when she was 17, again in New York, when she was 17, and a third time, as part of an orgy on Epstein’s island, when she was 18. By law, at 17, she would have been above the age of consent in New York and England, but not in Florida, where the age of consent is 18.

As part of the affidavit, Roberts furnished a photograph of her with the prince and Maxwell, which she said was taken in London.

Dershowitz, who was part of Epstein’s criminal defense team, was often a guest at Epstein’s homes, she said.

“I had sexual intercourse with Dershowitz at least six times,’’ Roberts wrote in the 2015 court affidavit. “The first time was when I was about 16, early on in my servitude to Epstein and it continued until I was 19.’’ She detailed some of those alleged trysts, which she said happened at Epstein’s homes in Palm Beach, New Mexico and on Epstein’s island.

One of Epstein’s housemen, Juan Alessi, testified in a 2009 sworn deposition that Dershowitz visited Epstein’s Palm Beach home four or five times a year. He said that Roberts was a frequent visitor as well, but he never placed Dershowitz and Roberts at the house at the same time.

Alessi, who testified he worked for Epstein from 1999 to 2002, said there were often young girls who gave massages at the house, even in the middle of the night. But he said he never checked their ages, and only knew one girl for certain who was underage, because he had picked her up from high school. That girl, who is now an actress, was not one of Epstein’s masseuses, Alessi said.

He also said he was Maxwell’s driver, and he recalls waiting outside of Mar-a-Lago the day Maxwell met Roberts. He testified he saw Maxwell talking to Roberts and recalls Roberts coming to Epstein’s mansion later that day. One of Alessi’s jobs was to drive Maxwell to various spas in Palm Beach where she left business cards in order to “recruit’’ more masseuses, he said in the sworn deposition.

Dershowitz, Prince Andrew and Maxwell have long denied Roberts’ allegations.

In an interview with the Herald, Dershowitz reiterated that he had never met Roberts, and never saw Epstein with any underage girls.

“The story was 100 percent flatly categorically made-up,’’ he said, adding that Roberts and her attorneys fabricated the assertion in order to get money from other powerful, wealthy people she alleges she had sex with.

“The only possible reason to accuse me in public and [them] in private is so she could get money,’’ Dershowitz said.

Edwards and his co-counsel in the Crime Victims’ lawsuit, University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell, sued Dershowitz for defamation and Dershowitz countersued in 2015. The case was settled out of court, with Dershowitz saying he had been vindicated.

Dershowitz said he received a massage at Epstein’s Palm Beach home only once — but that it was just a regular, therapeutic massage by a masseuse — not by Roberts or anyone underage. Dershowitz’s wife was there at Epstein’s house at the time, Dershowitz said in the deposition taken for the case in 2015.

“I never had any knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein having any contact with any underage women — ever,’’ Dershowitz told the Herald.

Edwards and Cassell admitted making a “tactical mistake” in filing the accusations against Dershowitz as part of a lawsuit not involving him. But they emphasized that the settlement had no bearing on the veracity of Roberts’ allegations.

The judge for the Crime Victims’ Rights Act lawsuit agreed that the affidavit was misplaced in that case, and it was dropped.

Prince Andrew’s spokesman at Buckingham Palace did not respond to an email requesting comment.

Roberts, now 35, said it has taken her a long time to stand up to Epstein. She and 20 other victims received settlements from Epstein, ranging from $50,000 to more than $1 million. The exact amounts have been kept confidential.

“It takes so long until you are able to speak about it. It took me having a daughter and looking at this young, beautiful innocent baby to say I want to speak out about it now. I’m hoping that this will bring out more girls so that they say, Me Too.’’

THE STATE COURT HEARING

The judge at Epstein’s sentencing hearing at the Palm Beach County Courthouse knew very little about Epstein’s crimes. The sentencing paperwork was restricted to Epstein’s specific charges: one count of solicitation of prostitution and one count of procuring a person under the age of 18 for prostitution.

“Are there more than one victim?’’ Circuit Court Judge Deborah Dale Pucillo asked the prosecutor at Epstein’s sentencing on June 30, 2008.

“There’s several,’’ replied assistant state prosecutor Lanna Belohlavek.

“Are all the victims in both of these cases in agreement with the terms of this plea?’‘ Pucillo later asked.

“Yes,’‘ Belohlavek replied, telling the judge that she had spoken to “several” of Epstein’s victims.

Emails show that federal prosecutors didn’t want the judge to know how many victims and accomplices there were.

Federal prosecutor A. Marie Villafaña — in a September 2007 email to Epstein lawyer Jay Lefkowitz — said: “I will mention co-conspirators but I would prefer not to highlight for the judge all the other crimes and all the other persons that we could charge.’’

Attorney Spencer Kuvin happened to be in court that day because he’d heard Epstein was to appear, but Kuvin didn’t know why. He figured he’d use it as an opportunity to serve Epstein with civil court papers involving one of several victims he represented. Instead, he listened to what was happening and couldn’t believe that no one had contacted him or his clients.

“I was shocked to learn that the proceeding involved my client’s case and there was nothing I could do except watch as they disposed of her case without ever telling her,’’ Kuvin said.

At the hearing, Belohlavek and Epstein’s attorney, Goldberger, were in sync, the court transcript shows. Epstein would be required to register as a sex offender, but his probation would not be served under the strict requirements of sex offender probation.

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Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to a single state charge of soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14. Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He served 13 months at the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office Stockade Facility, much of the time outside of the gates on ‘work release.’ Emily Michot [email protected]

The judge didn’t question those provisions, but she did ask why Epstein was going to serve his sentence in the Palm Beach County stockade instead of in a Florida state prison, like most sex offenders.

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Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to a single state charge of soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14. Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in jail. He served 13 months at the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office Stockade, much of the time outside of the gates on ‘work release.’ Emily Michot [email protected]

“We just decided that was the best way to accomplish what needed to be done here and the parties agreed that that sentence satisfied everyone’s requirements,’’ Goldberger replied.

Said Judge Pucillo: “The taxpayers of Palm Beach County are going to pay 18 months to house this guy instead of DOC [the Department of Corrections]?”

Belohlavek: “Right.’’

Pucillo did not respond to a request for comment on the case.

Villafaña, the lead federal prosecutor in Epstein’s case, was in the courtroom, but there’s no indication she objected to Epstein’s cozier jail accommodations.

When he entered jail in July 2008, Epstein was arguably the most well-known inmate there. Records also show that Epstein hired Palm Beach sheriff’s deputies for his security details, paying them for the hours they spent monitoring him on work release at his West Palm Beach office, where he often stayed until 10 p.m., jail logs show.

The Herald reviewed their time sheets, showing that the deputies logged visitors coming and going to and from his office throughout the day. A record log of his visitors was kept in a safe, but the log no longer exists, according to a spokeswoman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.

One deputy who often worked Epstein’s detail said that his assignment was to stay in a front reception room of Epstein’s office. Epstein was in a separate office — with the door closed — most of the day as he accepted visitors, both male and female, the deputies’ logs show.

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An office inside of One Clearlake Centre, at 250 Australian Ave. is one of the known locations where Jeffrey Epstein was permitted to go during work release while serving his sentence at the Palm Beach County stockade. Emily Michot [email protected]

“It was not our job to monitor what he was doing in that office,’’ the deputy, now retired, told the Herald.

In their early reports in July 2008, the deputies referred to Epstein as “inmate’’ but within a few weeks the language had changed and he was called a “client.” He was occasionally allowed to take a break for lunch by sitting outside in a park, the records show, and they also gave him permission to scout for a new office. While on work release, he was required to wear an ankle bracelet to monitor his whereabouts.

The work release was approved by the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, said spokeswoman Therese Barbera.

“Jeffrey Epstein, while in custody, met the criteria for the Work Release Program,’’ Barbera wrote in an email. “There was no factual basis to deny Mr. Epstein the same availability of this program that is offered to other inmates under similar circumstances. Mr. Epstein was closely monitored and there were no problems encountered during his time in the program.”

But the sheriff’s own work release policy — a copy of which Barbera provided to the Herald — specifically notes that sex offenders aren’t eligible for work release.

At first, Barbera questioned whether Epstein was a sex offender at all, noting that he didn’t have to register officially until after his release from the jail in 2009. But his court papers clearly listed him as a sex offender. In fact, the papers Epstein signed — obtained by the Herald — included all the laws governing registered sex offenders in Florida.

Barbera refused to explain why Epstein was seemingly allowed to deviate from the agency’s policies. She also would not respond to requests for an accounting of the amount of money that Epstein paid the sheriff’s office for his private details.

Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, who has been in office since 2004 — and is widely considered to be one of the most powerful people in the county — did not respond to requests for comment.

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Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw was ultimately responsible for approving Jeffrey Epstein’s work-release arrangement. Taylor Jones Palm Beach Post

Epstein’s registration requirements are somewhat confusing, even to those who are responsible for keeping his registration. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which keeps the online registry, and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, where Epstein has to register in person twice a year, gave conflicting explanations over the past six months about who is responsible for ensuring that he is complying with the law.

On Nov. 14, the Herald asked the sheriff’s office for a full accounting of Epstein’s check-ins for 2018. The record the office supplied two days later showed he registered in January and in July — as required. But PBSO also inexplicably had him registering on Nov. 14 — the very same day that the Herald asked for the records from the sheriff’s office.

When asked about this sudden registration, Barbera replied: “The information we provided you was a snapshot from the FDLE website. Perhaps, someone from FDLE can provide a reason for you.’’

Said FDLE spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger in an email: “The screenshot is not on the public registry. This is information inputted by the local agency when the offender comes into the local sheriff’s office to register.’’

Plessinger said Epstein is not covered by the state’s new three-day rule, which requires sex offenders to re-register when they come to stay in Florida for three days or more. His town of Palm Beach home is already on file, as a temporary residence, she said.

So it’s not clear why he would have suddenly registered a third time on Nov. 14.

State Sen. Lauren Book, a child sex abuse survivor and vocal advocate for tough sex offender monitoring, called the case an appalling example of how those in the justice system allow wealthy people to skirt the law and bend the rules.

“These prosecutors, and judges and sheriffs who are making these decisions and allowing things to fly — we have to hold these people accountable. They are supposed to uphold the law — regardless of who a person is and how much money they have in the bank or who they had on their airplane.’’

PIECE BY PIECE

Over the years, Courtney Wild, Virginia Roberts and more than a dozen other women who say they were victims of Epstein have been quietly challenging the traditional legal norms that have failed to punish Epstein and other men in positions of power for sexual abuse.

Epstein has paid millions of dollars in civil compensation that, for the most part, has kept the details about his operation out of the public eye. As a result, much — but not all — of the testimony and evidence collected as part of the vast litigation has been sealed or redacted from public court records.

Taking a page from Epstein’s legal team, lawyers representing Epstein’s victims hired private investigators and former police detectives to dig into Epstein’s life. Over the past decade, they’ve tracked down hundreds of people, including dozens of other potential victims; they’ve interviewed Epstein’s recruiters, bookkeepers, housekeepers, butlers, pilots and drivers. They’ve traveled around the country and the world, taking statements and sworn depositions, coaxing people to talk who had previously been too reticent to come forward.

In short, they did what criminal prosecutors didn’t do.

Some of the information they’ve learned was given to federal authorities in New York. Edwards said those authorities have shown no interest in opening a new investigation focused on crimes he is alleged to have committed in that state, where he is listed as a level 3 sex offender, the most dangerous category, considered at risk to re-offend, records show. In New York, he has to register every 90 days.

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Virginia Roberts holds a photo of herself at age 16, when she was being sexually abused by Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. Roberts was employed by Epstein for massage and sex at his Palm Beach and New York homes as well as traveling with him on his private plane to his private island where he pimped her out for sex with his friends. Emily Michot [email protected]

HOLDING ABUSERS ACCOUNTABLE

In 2015, Roberts sued Maxwell for defamation in New York after Maxwell called her a liar in a news interview. The civil lawsuit was an effort by Roberts not just to clear her name, but an attempt to prove that Epstein and Maxwell operated an international underage sex trafficking operation. The lawsuit was settled out of court in 2017 and nearly all the evidence presented in the case has been sealed.

Roberts’ attorney, Sigrid McCawley, claims that Roberts received a sizable settlement, although the amount is confidential.

“She wanted to hold her abusers accountable and we were able to do that by bringing this case … which we ultimately settled very successfully for her,’’ said McCawley, an associate of noted Bush-Gore recount lawyer David Boies, who has also pursued cases against Epstein in federal court in New York.

Maxwell’s lawyer, Laura Menninger, declined to comment, referring the Herald to the court history.

“[Roberts] fabricated a story of abuse at the hands of Ms. Maxwell in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars from British tabloids with a motive for selling papers and advertisements and without regard for truth, veracity or substantiation,’’ Menninger noted in a 2016 response filed in the case.

In February, the Miami Herald filed a federal court motion in the Southern District of New York, seeking access to documents that were sealed in the Maxwell case. The motion, which was not opposed by Roberts, could have cast light on the full scope of Epstein’s possible sex trafficking operation, who was involved and whether it was covered up. Maxwell has opposed the Herald’s motion, which was denied in August.

The Herald is appealing.

Today, Epstein has a new private jet, which takes him around the world. Flight records show that he spends most of his time on his private island, Little St. James in the U.S. Virgin Islands, which he now lists as his permanent residence. He is registered in New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands as a sex offender. New Mexico, where he owns a sprawling ranch, does not list him as a convicted sex offender.

As part of its investigation, the Herald learned that in 2013, the federal government conceded that it had given Epstein what it called “valuable consideration” for information he provided to the FBI as part of his plea deal. The documents do not elaborate, but Epstein — a hedge fund manager who once worked for the investment firm Bear Stearns — was listed as a key investor who lost money in the financial crash of 2008.

Francey Hakes, a former federal child sex crimes prosecutor, said any consideration the government gave to Epstein should be made public.

“The public has a right to know why he got a slap on the wrist, and what was the interest that was so great that allowed him to not get prosecuted?”

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Nadia Marcinkova, now a professional pilot, worked for Jeffrey Epstein when he was molesting young women. Victims told police Marcinkova would participate in sex acts, often as Epstein choreographed every move. Jerod Harris

In recent years, Epstein has been traveling the world in his new Gulfstream V jet. He has been active in various charitable causes and scientific research projects. The Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation, based in the U.S. Virgin Islands, has helped fund NeuroTV, an online network that features interviews with academics and scientists.

THEN AND NOW

Both Nadia Marcinkova and Sarah Kellen changed their names after the scandal.

Marcinkova, 32, briefly became Marcinko. She visited Epstein more than 70 times when he was in Palm Beach custody. She went on to a career in real estate. And she is now an FAA-certified commercial pilot and flight instructor who goes by the name “Global Girl’’ on social media. (http://www.facebook.com/GlobalGirlAviation/)

Sarah Kellen, who used the name Kensington for a while, is now married to NASCAR driver Brian Vickers. The couple divides their time between homes in North Carolina, New York and Miami Beach.

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NASCAR driver Brian Vickers and his wife, Sarah, take part in pre-race ceremonies in Sparta, Ky., on June 28, 2014. She was known as Sarah Kellen when she was an aide to Jeffrey Epstein. According to police, she scheduled visits of underage girls to Epstein’s Palm Beach estate for massages that turned sexual. She was not charged with a crime. Will Schneekloth Getty Images

Maxwell, 56, transformed herself into an internationally known environmentalist. In 2012, she founded the TerraMar Project, a nonprofit environmental group that works to protect the world’s oceans. In 2013, she gave a TED Talk on ocean conservation, discussing her diving expeditions around the world.

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Guislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s close associate when he was inviting underage girls into his bedroom, leads a Ted Talk on environmental issues.

Dershowitz, 80, continues to lecture around the country. A professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, Dershowitz has been a frequent commenter on cable TV programs, often defending President Trump.

Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, 58, remained friends with Epstein, and in 2010, a photograph was taken of the two of them strolling in Manhattan. It was later revealed that Epstein had loaned the prince’s ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, $24,000 to pay off some debts. Ferguson later called the loan a “gigantic error of judgment.”

PLAIN HUMAN BEINGS

Crime victims’ rights advocates have used the Epstein case to strengthen the federal law in recent years, adding more precise language mandating that prosecutors notify victims about plea bargains and allow victims to be heard at sentencing.

Because some statute-of-limitation laws set deadlines for filing civil and criminal sex crime cases, it’s difficult to bring them years later, said Marci Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania professor who is working to ease those restrictions across the country.

But she points out that there has been no statute of limitations for federal sex crimes involving children since 2002.

Children who are sexually abused often take decades to reveal what happened to them, in part because their brains aren’t wired at a young age to understand the trauma they’ve experienced, said Kenneth V. Lanning, a retired FBI agent who investigated and studied child sex crimes for 40 years.

“We want to hold children to some superhuman standard because they behave this way. In reality, police, prosecutors and judges have to understand that children are not all angels from heaven. They are just plain human beings who are emotionally immature so we have to protect them from their own decisions.’’

Wild, who continues to fight her federal case on behalf of all of Epstein’s victims, said she hopes that the federal judge hearing the Crime Victims’ Rights case will make a ruling soon, one that will send a message to prosecutors who fail to consider the rights of crime victims.

“Really if you think about this too hard, it’s scary because this is our government that is supposed to protect us but has done everything to protect a pedophile,’’ she said. More from the series

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[admin]

He was over 50. They were little girls. Their stories were almost identical. The evidence was substantial.
BY JULIE K. BROWN AND AARON ALBRIGHT
NOV. 28, 2018
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... 97990.html

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. Acosta, now President Donald Trump’s secretary of labor, agreed to seal the agreement so that no one — not even Epstein’s victims — would know the full extent of his crimes or who was involved. This is the story of that deal — and how his victims, more than a decade later, are still fighting a criminal justice system that has stubbornly failed to hold wealthy, powerful men accountable for sexual abuse.

[admin]

For years, Jeffrey Epstein abused teen girls, police say. A timeline of his case
BY JULIE K. BROWN
NOV. 28, 2018
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... 04845.html

A decade before #MeToo, a multimillionaire sex offender from Florida got the ultimate break. 2005 March: A 14-year-old girl and her parents report that Jeffrey Epstein molested her at a mansion in Palm Beach. She said a female acquaintance and classmate at Royal Palm Beach High School had taken her to the house to give him a massage in exchange for money. Jeffrey Epstein’s waterfront Palm Beach home in on El Brillo Way off of A1A. In addition to his Palm Beach home, Epstein owns a residence in New York City and on a private island in the U.S Virgin. Islands. Epstein has been accused of molesting scores of young girls in his homes. Emily Michot [email protected] April: Palm Beach police begin trash pulls at Epstein’s home, discovering a telephone message for Epstein with the girl’s name on it, and a time that matched the time that she told police she was there. They find the names and phone numbers of other girls on message slips in his trash. October: With the police probe in full swing, one of Epstein’s assistants calls one of the girls just as she is being questioned by police. Investigators begin interviewing more girls, as well as Epstein’s butlers, who tell them that Epstein had frequent visits from girls throughout the day. On Oct. 20, they execute a search warrant at his house on El Brillo Way in Palm Beach. 2006 May: Police sign a probable cause affidavit charging Epstein and two of his assistants with multiple counts of unlawful sex acts with a minor. The Palm Beach state attorney, Barry Krischer, instead refers the case to a grand jury. Palm Beach police were unhappy with the handling of the Epstein case by then-State Attorney Barry Krischer. June: The grand jury, after hearing from only one girl, returns an indictment of one count of solicitation of prostitution. The charge does not reflect that the victim in question and others were minors. July: Epstein’s powerhouse legal team tries to negotiate a deal with the State Attorney’s Office. Lawyers discuss a deferred prosecution in which Epstein would enter a pretrial intervention program and serve no jail time. July: After pressure from the Palm Beach police chief, the FBI opens a federal investigation, dubbed “Operation Leap Year.’’ Documents list the possible crime as “child prostitution.’’ November: The FBI begins interviewing potential witnesses and victims from Florida, New York and New Mexico. 2007 May: As the U.S. Attorney’s Office prepares to present the case to a federal grand jury, Epstein’s attorneys request a meeting to discuss the investigation. June: A 53-page indictment is prepared by the U.S. Attorney’s Office as, simultaneously, plea negotiations are initiated with Epstein’s legal team. July: Grand jury subpoenas are issued for Epstein’s computers, which were apparently removed from his Palm Beach home prior to the police search. August: The U.S. attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, enters into direct discussions about the plea agreement; a motion to compel production of Epstein’s computers is delayed. September: Federal prosecutors draw up several federal plea agreements that are rejected by Epstein and his attorneys. Epstein signs a non-prosecution agreement on Sept. 24, but his attorneys continue to delay his court appearance. Alexander Acosta has been criticized for his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case as U.S. attorney. He later became the dean of Florida International University’s law school and, later still, President Trump’s secretary of labor. Miami Herald file photo October: With the non-prosecution agreement still being debated, Acosta meets with Epstein lawyer Jay Lefkowitz at the West Palm Beach Marriott on Okeechobee Boulevard to discuss finalizing a deal. Among the terms agreed upon: that the victims would not be notified, that the deal would be kept under seal and all grand jury subpoenas would be canceled. The Marriott hotel in West Palm Beach, at 1001 Okeechobee Blvd., is where U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta met with Jeffrey Epstein’s attorney to work out his plea deal. Emily Michot [email protected] November: Epstein’s lawyers object to an addendum to the agreement. The provision called for a special master to appoint an attorney to represent Epstein victims’ rights to civil compensation. December: The two sides continue to debate the addendum. Epstein attorney Kenneth Starr asks for a review of the agreement by the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, further delaying its execution. Victims are told the investigation is continuing. 2008 January: Epstein attorney, Lefkowitz, calls Acosta, telling him his client will not go through with the agreement because it requires him to register as a sex offender. February: With the plea negotiations and the Justice Department review still in limbo, the FBI continues its probe, locating more witnesses and evidence. March: Preparations are made for a new federal grand jury presentation. In court documents, the U.S. Attorney’s Office notes that Epstein’s victims are being harassed by his lawyers, who are not specifically named. May: The Justice Department issues finding that, if a plea deal is not reached, Epstein can be federally prosecuted. June: Epstein’s lawyers revisit plea negotiations, and on June 30, Epstein appears in a Palm Beach County courtroom. He pleads guilty to state charges: one count of solicitation of prostitution and one count of solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18. He is sentenced to 18 months in jail, followed by a year of community control or house arrest. He is adjudicated as a convicted sex offender who must register twice a year in Florida. July: Epstein’s victims learn about his plea in state court after the fact. They file an emergency petition to force federal prosecutors to comply with the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act, which mandates certain rights for crime victims, including the right to be informed about plea agreements and the right to appear at sentencing. August: Epstein’s victims learn that he has already been sent to jail, and that the federal investigation is over. They seek to have his plea agreement unsealed, but federal prosecutors argue against releasing the agreement, commencing a yearlong court battle to learn the terms of Epstein’s plea bargain. October: Epstein begins work release from the county stockade. He is picked up by his private driver six days a week and transported to an office in West Palm Beach, where he accepts visitors for up to 12 hours a day. He returns to the stockade in the evenings to sleep. 2009 July: Epstein is released from the Palm Beach County stockade, five months early. He must register as a sex offender and is on probation for a year, confined to his Palm Beach home except to travel to his office in West Palm Beach. However, records show he frequently makes trips to Manhattan and to his home in the U.S. Virgin Islands. August: Palm Beach Police Capt. George Frick finds Epstein walking along A1A in the middle of the afternoon, when he was supposed to be at work in his office in downtown West Palm Beach. Epstein says he is walking to work, even though the location where he is found is not a direct route to his office. His probation officer says Epstein has permission to get some exercise. September: The federal non-prosecution agreement is made public. By September, at least a dozen civil lawsuits have been filed by women who allege they were molested by Epstein when they were underage. Epstein begins the process of settling them out of court. Jeffrey Epstein never went to federal prison but his butler/houseman, Alfredo Rodriguez, did, for obstruction of justice. He was busted for hiding Epstein’s journal and trying to sell it. He died in prison. © Facebook November: One of Epstein’s former butlers tries to sell to an undercover FBI agent a black book filled with the names of hundreds of girls and young women that Epstein allegedly procured for sex and massages. The butler tells FBI agents he witnessed nude underage girls at Epstein’s pool and had known that the millionaire was having sex with them. He also said he saw pornography involving underage girls on Epstein’s computers. The butler/houseman, Alfredo Rodriguez, is later charged with obstruction of justice and sentenced to federal prison. He dies in 2015. The contents of the black book become public as part of several civil lawsuits. 2010 April: Flight logs obtained as part of civil lawsuits against Epstein show an assortment of politicians, academics, celebrities, heads of state and world leaders flying on Epstein’s jets in the early 2000s. Among them: former President Bill Clinton, former national security adviser Sandy Berger, former Colombian President Andrés Pastrana and lawyer Alan Dershowitz. 2011 March: Two of Epstein’s victims file a motion in federal court accusing the government of violating their rights by failing to notify them about the plea deal and keeping it secret. Among other things, they want the plea deal invalidated in the hopes of sending Epstein to prison. They accuse federal prosecutors of deceiving them with “false notification letters.’’ September: U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra rejects the U.S. Attorney’s Office argument that it was under no obligation to notify victims prior to striking a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein because there were no federal charges filed against him. The decision marks a victory for Epstein’s victims, but the case will drag on for seven more years. November: Epstein must register in New York as the highest and most dangerous level of sex offender, despite efforts by him and the New York District Attorney’s office to lower the classification. A Level 3 status means “high risk of repeat offense and a threat to public safety exists,” according to the state’s guidelines. 2012 March-December: Calling himself a “celebrated philanthropist’’ and a “renowned educational investor,’’ Epstein undertakes a public relations campaign to counter bad press about his sexual exploits. His foundation donates millions to scientific research and sponsors global conferences on ways to achieve world peace and save the planet. He funds cancer and educational research projects around the country. 2015 January: Virginia Roberts files court papers in Florida claiming that she was forced by Epstein to have sex with Prince Andrew and lawyer Alan Dershowitz when she was underage. In a sworn affidavit, she provides photographs of her with the prince and with Epstein’s close associate, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell. She claims Maxwell worked as Epstein’s madam, which she denies. Dershowitz and the prince deny her claims as well, setting off a series of legal actions between Dershowitz and Roberts’ attorneys that are later resolved in an out-of-court settlement. April: A federal judge rules that Roberts cannot join the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act lawsuit and that her affidavit — accusing Prince Andrew and Dershowitz of having sex with her when she was underage — be stricken from the case. Dershowitz said the ruling meant he was vindicated. However, the judge does not address the veracity of Roberts’ claims, writing: “The factual details regarding with whom and where the Jane Does engaged in sexual activities are immaterial and impertinent to this central claim.’’ September: Roberts sues Maxwell in federal court in New York, claiming that Epstein’s alleged madam defamed her in public statements in the media. The lawsuit is widely viewed as a vessel for Epstein’s victims to expose the scope of Epstein’s crimes. Several civil lawsuits filed the same year allege that Epstein and Maxwell operated an international sex trafficking operation. Virginia Roberts holds a photo of herself at age 16, when she alleges she was being sexually abused by Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein. Roberts was employed by Epstein for massages and sex at his Palm Beach and New York homes, and traveled with him on his corporate jet to his private island, where he allegedly had her engage in sex with his friends and associates. Emily Michot [email protected] 2016 June: A lawsuit is filed in Manhattan by a woman who once used the name Katie Johnson, claiming that she was raped by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump at a party at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion in 1994 when she was 13 years old. Trump and Epstein both categorically deny it ever happened. Attorney Brad Edwards is representing several of Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s accusers. Emily Michot [email protected] November: Johnson backs out of a press conference just days before Election Day, saying she had been threatened and was fearful. She later drops the lawsuit. 2017 February: President Trump nominates former Miami federal prosecutor Acosta as U.S. secretary of labor. Acosta is compelled at his confirmation hearing to briefly address questions about the deal he approved for Epstein. One lawmaker requests more records from the Epstein case. Acosta is confirmed. June: Roberts settles her lawsuit with Maxwell for an undisclosed sum. 2018 December: Civil trial is scheduled in Palm Beach County Court on Bradley Edwards’ allegations that Epstein sued him to punish him for representing several of his victims. The malicious-prosecution lawsuit is set to begin Dec. 4. Epstein has indicated he will not appear in court for trial.

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