Most of the indictments seem to claim he targeted ages 14-17, but I’ve seen claims of lower and it may just have been they were being conservative in bringing the indictment to winnow it down to the most provable cases.
However Brad Edwards that pursued a lot of these victim cases against Epstein claims that Epstein was far and away his own main client. The trafficking according to Edwards was just a small part of the bigger picture of abuse - the vast majority of girls were for him alone. Quote from article linked above:
“For the most part, those two worlds did not overlap. And where they overlapped, in the instances they overlapped, it seems to be a very small percentage,” Edwards said. “There were occasions where a select few of these men engaged in sexual acts with a select few of the girls that Jeffrey Epstein was exploiting or abusing – primarily girls who were over the age of 18.”
There need to be legitimate investigations, which aren’t going to happen in the US no matter which party is in control of government. Luckily foreign nations are doing investigations.
Having said that, I’m guessing (with no evidence) that Gates had sex with sex workers, but I’m assuming it was sex workers of age. Possibly girls who were 14-17 though too, not just 18+ sex workers. And with Epstein theres a high risk the sex workers were not there voluntarily. You don’t really catch STDs from having sex with virginal children.
But again, there needs to be a legitimate investigation.
My impression is Epstein wanted girls who were in their mid/late teens, but not legal because he could use them as blackmail.
Its much easier to blackmail someone for having sex with a 14-17 year old than it is to blackmail someone who has sex with someone who is 18+.
Epstein was fundamentally a blackmail operation who worked with intelligence agencies. Theres very little blackmail material in having sex with consenting adults vs non-consensual with children.
I can see the logic of him running a honeypot operation as true, but the key thing that hasn’t been substantiated, is where is the evidence of the blackmail? Which is sort of the primary purpose of such an operation.
I think the more likely and reasonable one is that he used sex and the prurient interest of wealthy people with lower moral fiber, to join him and gain their influence to further his personal wealth.
Melinda French Gates probably had very good investigative people. She found out about all the Epstien stuff before most other people. That was the basis for the divorce. She is very smart or Bill would not have married her in the first place. He screwed up, got caught, divorced, and probably thought that was it. Not over one little indescretion, rich men tend to have those, no, it was the whole Epstien saga.
To the OP, no I do not believe a single word that he says, because he is sure he can get away with it. Smart guy at one time who changed the world with his products, then the richest man in the world became convinced that he is also the smartest man in the world. No respect left for him from me.
Anecdote that has nothing to do with this: I was working at a feed manufacturer selling salmon and trout food. Guy calls me to order a box and I asked for a credit card to pay for it, he declined said it was for the Medina Project like I should know what that is. I said , you don’t know my CFO, I need payment and I said we could send it UPS COD, Ok. Week later we recieved a large business check from William Gates III for $44. It was a big hit from the finance staff when I told them I insisted that he pay. I don’t think they ever even cashed that check.
You forgot another one- People who wanted Epstein to make a donation or get a free jet ride for their charity.
In the territory that his island was in, the age of consent was 16, not 18. Many nations use that, like Japan (where it was recently changed from 13!) and Switzerland, etc. Brazil is 14 even.
Victim names should be redacted, unless maybe they have publicly come forward. Same for people who were only tangentially associated.
Bill built a 66,000 square foot home in Medina, Washington just off Lake Washington south of Seattle. He had a live salmon stream flowing right through the living room.
That is so damn cool. The Monterey Bay aquarium has a small trout etc stream, and I always wanted a copy of that. One time I was even allowed to feed the trout (special event for special members).
“Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?” Acosta had been asked. Acosta had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he’d had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” he told his interviewers in the Trump transition, who evidently thought that was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta. (The Labor Department had no comment when asked about this.)
For sure if anyone in any administration at any time wanted to quell the Epstein prosecution simply to keep personally embarrassing secrets secret, telling the would-be prosecutor that the whole thing is an intel setup and so to leave it alone is a very easy thing to do.
The challenge for us on the outside is that Acosta is (probably) telling the truth that he was asked told to back off because spooks. But was whoever up the food chain who originated the “because spooks” story telling the truth? We’ll almost certainly never know. Not whether it was the truth and not who that higher-level somebody was.
And not specifically because of trumply misfeasance, although doubtless now the current criminal regime is aggressively covering whatever tracks they can find.
And a particular set of spooks that keeps being referenced as at least partly to blame in the context of this case (Mossad), makes the imputation carry an unpleasant ulterior-motive stink.