Eppie

I've considered writing about Jeffrey Epstein for a long time, but I kept expecting more information about the sordid case to be forthcoming from the Southern District of New York. So far however we have seen no additional indictments or any investigative report. This surprises many people because there are strong indications that there is ample basis for additional indictments, despite Epstein's death. I'll get to that.

I don't have any information to add to what is publicly known, obviously, but many people don't fully understand the story and the mysteries connected with it, so I figured I'd provide a summary as a service. The first oddity in his career is that as an unemployed college dropout with no relevant experience, he was hired by the father of now U.S. Attorney General William Barr to teach at a prestigious prep school in Manhattan in 1974. Yes, that's weird. It should be noted that Barr pere left for a job at another school before Epstein actually started teaching in September. Epstein was fired after two years for unspecified reasons, although there have been some indications of inappropriate behavior toward students. Nevertheless Alan Greenberg of Bear Stearns, whose daughter attended the school, hired him as a trader.

He rocketed up through the ranks and was made a partner after four years, then he was abruptly fired, again for unspecified reasons, although he remained close to Greenberg. He then founded a financial consulting firm and went around telling people he was an intelligence agent. He apparently possessed a fake Austrian passport which had his picture but a different name and gave his residence as Saudi Arabia. One of his clients was the notorious international arms dealer Adnan Kashoggi who was implicated in the Iran-Contra affair. In 1987 he got himself hired by Tower Financial Corporation, which collapsed in 1993 when it turned out to be a ponzi scheme that cost its investors $450 million. Epstein got out just before the collapse and was not charged.

He then set up his own financial management firm which he claimed managed assets only for people with more than $1 billion in net worth. However, investment firm executives have told reporters that they saw no sign of the large scale trading that such a company would engage in. The source of Epstein's wealth is not known, but the New York Times reported that he formed a relationship with Leslie Wexner, the owner of Victoria's Secret, who gave Epstein complete control over his affairs through a power of attorney and apparently gifted him his New York mansion worth tens of millions of dollars. In 1996, Epstein moved his base of operations to a private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands for the tax advantages.

In the early 2000s, Epstein apparently lost tens of millions of dollars in various risky investments, including with Bear Stearns which collapsed in 2007 while while Epstein was negotiating a plea deal with the U.S. Attorney for South Florida, Alexander Acosta, who later became Donald Trump's Secretary of Labor. Although Epstein was charged with multiple counts of statutory rape and sex trafficking involving 40 underage girls, he received a deal in which he was allowed to plead guilty to two a single state charge of procuring a girl under 18, for which he received an 18 month sentence in which he was allowed to spend his days on work release at his office. He received immunity from all federal charges and his co-conspirators were all immunized as well. The U.S. Attorney did not inform the victims of this outcome. Alan Dershowitz negotiated the deal. Later, when Acosta was being vetted for the cabinet position, he said that he had been warned that Epstein "belonged to intelligence" and to "leave him alone." He did not say who gave him this warning.

According to Wikipedia, "Julie Brown's 2018 exposé^[8][62][90] in the Miami Herald identified about 80 victims and located about 60 of them. She quotes the then police chief, Michael Reiter, "This was 50-something 'shes' and one 'he'—and the 'shes' all basically told the same story."^[8] Details from the investigation included allegations that 12-year-old triplets were flown in from France for Epstein's birthday, and flown back the following day after being sexually abused by the financier. It was alleged that young girls were recruited from Brazil and other South American countries, former Soviet countries, and Europe, and that Jean Luc Brunel's "MC2" modeling agency was also supplying girls to Epstein."

There are reports that he filmed prominent men having sex with girls he provided, and considerable speculation that the actual source of his wealth was blackmail. The proposal is that he would show them the evidence and then compel them to invest in his fund. Since he didn't actually have to provide a substantial return, but just drain off fees, he could invest the funds passively. Ghislane Maxwell, one of his main procurers (daughter of the notorious criminal financier Robert Maxwell) told people that his properties were all wired with video, which supports this idea.

Following the Miami Herald investigation, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York indicted and arrested him on new charges. As part of the investigation they raided all of his properties and are reported to have recovered thousands of photographs and videos of underage girls. This is why it is puzzling to people that no additional indictments have been forthcoming. That Ghislane Maxwell and other procurers have not been indicted could be because SDNY doesn't think it can prove overt acts that weren't covered by the earlier grant of immunity, but that would imply there were no new criminal acts after 2008, and there is ample reason to believe that is not the case.

Epstein's death on July 23 could plausibly have been a suicide. He was facing life in prison. On the other hand consider the case of Whitey Bulger. He was inexplicably transferred to a high risk setting and left unwatched in  the general population, where he was murdered in an obvious mob hit for which nobody has been charged. AG Barr purported to be outraged by Epstein's death, but he is the very person in charge of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Just sayin'.


Several victims, including most notably a woman named Virginia Roberts Giuffre, have sued Epstein (now his estate). Giuffre alleges that she was held as a sex slave for three years and made to have sex with Britain's Prince Andrew (younger son of Queen Elizabeth), former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson* and Trump loving attorney Alan Dershowitz. All of course deny the allegation. There is circumstantial corroborative evidence in the case of Prince Andrew, who was in the places at the times Giuffre alleges he abused her. There is also a photograph of him with her, which he claims was photoshopped. Dershowitz has told a bizarre story of receiving a massage from an elderly Russian woman at Epstein's mansion in New York. There is no known evidence such a person existed.

Finally, there has been a recent flapdoodle over a leaked recording of ABC News reporter Amy Robach complaining that her 2015 interview with Roberts Giuffre was not aired. In that interview Roberts Giuffre said that she had seen Bill Clinton on Epstein's private island, according to Robach, although not apparently that he had abused her. Clinton has acknowledged taking flights on Epstein's private jet. In the recording she maintains that Epstein was indeed a professional blackmailer; that she is certain he was murdered; and that the story was killed because ABC wanted to retain access to the royal family. On the other hand it seems a reasonable editorial judgment not to air unsubtantiated allegations by someone who is using them as the basis for a multi-million dollar lawsuit. In any case Giuffre's allegations have been widely reported elsewhere.

I will just say at this point that a) it is obvious that Epstein had powerful protectors; b) this may be in part because he had knowledge of wrongdoing by U.S. intelligence agencies, or because he was blackmailing powerful people, or some combination; c) if he was indeed engaged in blackmail, the FBI presumably has the receipts and SDNY will presumably move against the people therein depicted in due course. I would hope that if Bill Barr tries to order them off the case they will resign in protest and spill the beans, but maybe he already has and they haven't. Or maybe they really don't have anything. At this point all we can do is wait.

*I have met Bill Richardson. When he was running for president he visited the community based organization in Boston that I worked for at the time. He is a Tufts alum and I was adjunct Tufts faculty and had a M.A. from Tufts, so we had a conversation about the university. He didn't strike me at someone who would take advantage of a 15-year-old sex slave, but how can you tell?