But as a prosecutor, your job is to prosecute the crime placed in front of you, not to defend the free world from tyranny. For the purpose of investigating sex trafficking of minors, Epstein is the big fish. Sure if you come across something damning you should prosecute that as well, but you don’t give up the ring leader in order to prosecute a client. Even if that client happens to be the president.
And what will you say when he kidnaps and molests one of your daughters? Would that be “fairly small” damage? Still “worth it”? :dubious:
It may seem small to you, but that’s prolly because you’re not actually involved in any way. Ask his victims if they think the same as you; I’ll bet they do not.
Tom Winter, NBC News, is about to break a story detailing Epstein’s use of the passport with no name during the 1980s.
No, this is one of those cases where a message MUST be sent. The message is that wealth and influence should not and cannot shield you from the consequences of heinous acts. The prosecutor has to jump on his head with both feet. Partly because he richly deserves it and partly to undo the damage of his previous sweetheart deal.
Epstein used the 2nd passport during the 80s to visit the UK, KSA, and other locations:
He claims it was for his protection, as a Jewish man traveling in the ME at that time.
Lol:
Epstein refuses to attest if he is or is not a citizen or permanent resident of a country other than the US.
You know, like we all would.
It felt good to be out of the rain.
No.
With apologies for interjecting myself into whatever private conversation you’re having in this thread on a public message board.
I was kind of thinking along those lines. Neither going to prison nor implicating powerful clients/friends/corapists is conducive to survival. He seems hosed either way.
No matter who is taken down, it would serve that message - particularly if its a large number of people of the Epstein level and particularly if it’s the President of the USA.
If the President can be taken down by the law, that’s a larger message on those lines than Epstein.
Feel free to disagree. My complaint with Fiddlehead was that he accused JohnT and me of dishonesty and craziness, disregarding for example the post right before he chimed in where I pointed out that it would have been completely normal for Epstein to have been in Paris at that moment of time, no matter what, and not particularly meaningful. And then he proceeded to bitch that we were forcing our conclusions on him - despite that we had come to no conclusions and no one’s forcing anything on anyone. I appreciated, for example, his critique of the chances that Trump could move around secretly and meet with people, undiscovered. If he was simply raising points for consideration, I would have had no issue.
When some bad news about Trump is in progress and he doesn’t want people to focus on it, he’ll say or do something stupid.
This news about Epstein drops. There’s video of him and Trump together. The connection is undeniable.
A day or two later, Trump says some of the most racist things he’s ever said and he picks a fight with a group of Congresswomen who are fighting back fiercely. Now we’re watching what is the admittedly fun show of AOC et al putting Trump on blast.
But we’ve stopped talking about Epstein and his Trump connection. Now why does Trump not want us looking at that story any longer?
Could it be that Ivanka did some “modeling” for Epstein, not knowing the pictures would make their way back to daddy? I hope if and when the FBI finds this material, they disregard any order from the Attorney General to immediately destroy it.
Funny. We’re still talking about it. There’s still a story on Trump and Epstein up on the Washington Post. Maybe people can pay attention to more than one story at once?
Look, there’s no strategy here by Trump to divert attention. He says awful, racist, stupid things because he’s an awful, racist, stupid person. He says them because he knows the sort of people who go to his rallies will eat it up, and cheer him on, and stroke his ego.
There’s no strategy with Trump. There’s nothing but narcissism and greed, and the immediate gratification of both. No calculation, just a petty, hateful bully spouting off.
Right. For this to be a “strategy” there would have to be significant periods of time when Trump was not saying stupid hateful stuff. But it’s really just a constant drumbeat. Every couple of days (or less) Trump says or tweets some more nonsense. And Trump getting bad publicity about one thing or another is pretty much constant too. I really don’t see that Trump ups the outrageousness in a consistent way when some other shit is going on.
I mean, I think it’s perfectly plausible that when he becomes aware of some particularly egregious other shit going on, he gets more irritable and resentful, which amplifies his natural tendency to up the outrageousness. But I agree that it really doesn’t seem appropriate to dignify this reaction with the name “plan”.
Except as a Republican President Trump is above the law, and can’t be taken down by any crime no matter how serious. So letting Epstein go would just mean Epstein walks and Trump stays.
That’s generally true but not absolutely true. It’s generally accepted, for example, that if the President murdered someone in broad daylight in front of a pile of witnesses that you would have to move forward with a prosecution.
It just depends on the severity of the crime.
Had there been sufficient evidence of a conspiracy with Russia, Mueller probably would have prosecuted. Obstruction of Justice didn’t meet the severity threshold for unilateral action.
Sage Rat, you linked to a theory of Epstein running an extensive blackmail scheme. The theory eerily fits all the known facts.
Now NY magazine Intelligencer supports that theory as well. They asked a bunch of real hedgefund managers to look into Epsteins way of working. They concur that the most likely way Epstein made his money is basically this:
- Throw lavish parties with jailbait girls, and very rich guys who may be goaded into having sex with them; dress up the parties further with naive celebrities that think your parties are the place to be;
- Gather compromat on the sex, and blackmail the guys into investing their money with you, and charge them for "handling and investment"fees
- Supply your victims with more girls, because, once they’re in your claws, they might as well enjoy it. Also, supply your clients with every tax evasion scheme they need. If client Trump needs to officially lose billions of money so he doesn’t have to pay taxes, you can arrange for him to have his “stocks” lose the required amounts of money, only to magically make him “profit” from another business scheme.
There is evidence to back this up. Epstein had, for instance, not 150 but at most 30 people working for him. No colleagues in the hedgefund world know of him actually doing hedge fund work or deals.
It’s probably worth pointing out that Team Acosta don’t seem to have ever looked into him, along the financial angle (or, it never came out in the press at any rate). That’s another curiosity on the part of the previous conviction.
I would say that, excluding blackmail, any form of con game relies on the desire for the mark to commit a crime in order to win big. It’s what keeps them from going to the cops after they discover that they’ve been ripped off.
And, traditionally at least, con artists like to get a friendly cop or two on their side, giving them kickbacks for taking any cases that are reported and - subsequently - falling to follow through on them.
Adding some underaged girls or even any girls at all into the mix and you’ve got double protection. Drug the guy out and, when he wakes up, whether he was with a kiddo or an adult, he’s still going to be pretty damn concerned about what happened the previous night and whether it’s on tape.
In a sense, all of that is blackmail - even at the level of a traditional con game, where you’re simply inviting someone to join you in a criminal bit of financial misbehavior. But it’s probably more accurate to look at it principally as a con game. Conceivably, the girls were just there for Epstein himself in all or a majority of cases. That shouldn’t mean that you let him go on the financial stuff. If he was running a con job then, even if the “backstop” wasn’t girls, it was still fraud and extortion.
Should it prove true that Acosta was simply following orders (to protect Prince Andrew and UK involvement in Iraq) then, I’ll note, that it looks like it would have been at the order of either Alberto Gonzalez, Paul McNulty, or Craig S. Morford. In June of 2007, the prosecution was about to release a giant indictment against Epstein. By September, Vilafana was sending over misdemeanors to the defense, to ask them which one Epstein was least opposed to. That would have been during the last half of “The Surge”.
Timing wise, the theory does check out.
But in terms of politics, that’s horribly stupid. You can safely trust that the population of the UK wants pedophiles to be captured and arrested. They’ll not just be okay with it, they’ll be happy about it. And, similarly, you can safely trust that if the people like a thing then the politicians will also like that thing.
Not to mention that any British investigation would have taken a few years, before anything actually happened. All that would have occurred during the the trial itself would have been, in essence, gossip on the matter. The US wouldn’t have filed for an extradition of Andrew and all the court documents would have been sealed so we’re talking about Epstein, as an anonymous source, leaking to the press that Andrew was guilty, too. :rolleyes:
Whoever thought it was a good idea - even if we assume that the Iraq war was the most necessary and well-considered thing ever - was a moron and deserves to take the majority of the scorn.
Obviously, that could still be Acosta, though, it’s worth noting. I could easily see, as example, Epstein telling them that he would out the Prince of England if they continued, destroying the British alliance, causing the surge to fizzle, and ending Acosta’s career trajectory. Acosta could have been (at Epstein’s prompting) the originator of the idea and the core salesman for it, as an effort to brown-nose that he was “saving our troops”.
I find it likely that emails from the time, between Acosta and DOJ central probably still exist and would be…interesting.