Contracts are normally binding even after the death of one of the parties.
Some are some are not (NDAs with individuals generally are not binding after death unless they have a clause that says they are) but this is not a commercial contract, its a plea deal with the state. AFAIK plea deals are not even legally enforceable, they are basically gentlemen’s agreements that the judge will give an sentence in the range specified if the accused pleas guilty to the crimes specified (the state cancelling them may invalidate the plea, IIRC?, but there are no other repercussions for the state for breaking them)
But if I understand you correctly, the plea agreement was with Epstein alone. So no way should it be applicable to his “co-conspirators”; they aren’t parties to the agreement!
Yeah totally. In practice we all know this plea deal was about protecting his co-conspirators (that’s not a conspiracy theory, to come to any other conclusion stretches the bounds of credibility). But on paper this was just an agreement with a single defendant to avoid a lengthy trial with no guarantee of success by accepting a reasonable sentence, there is no reason any of its restrictions should outlive the defendant. And there is no reason it should effect any other prosecutions (again it clearly did so in practice, but that was a heinous miscarriage of justice, on paper it didn’t so anything of the sort)
Yeah. If it were true that an immunity deal with one person conferred immunity on their compatriots, then it wouldn’t be possible to (for example) get mob accountants to testify against the boss. I have no idea what PhillyGuy is trying to suggest here.
You are then gonna have to pay for 9 times as many employees of the District attorneys office, plus of course more buildings etc to office them, plus 9 times as many judges, plus many or or much larger jails for all those waiting for their trial that couldn’t afford bail. Plus also few going into therapy or community service instead, thus more prisons. Oha, and ten times the chance of serving on a jury, so more taxes for jury pay, sequestering etc.
Why?
Yes, it could embarrass the Democratic party, but NOTHING will embarrass the MAGAs.
Though thats the thing, nothing "before this* has remotely troubled Trump’s grasp on his Maga base. All the terrible things he’s done that should have decimated his support, has done nothing but increased it. But this Epstein List stuff has broken through, it does seem to be having some effect however small. The Democrats need to take advantage of that.
It is making trump angry, sure. But it wont affect the MAGAs- either “fake!!!” or “I’m voting for the pervert” ( “I’m voting for the felon” was a real thing. )
There is nothing to be gained here, especially since most of the “friends” are people he just gave a free ride on his private plane or had meals with etc..
So say trump is there- he has already said he got some free rides with Epstein, So big deal,
I mean, what does everyone think is on it? “Today DJT came over to the island, and I offered him a choice of a 16yo or a 17yo, he picked both”.
This is a good question. I mean its not impossible, it was clearly Epstein’s business model to use blackmail in this way. I have always been really skeptical not because I don’t think it’s possible Epstein could have evidence of Trump abusing children. But it seems so incredibly unlikely that it could exist for all these years, without leaking. It seems even more unlikely it could exist in some government evidence file and never leak.
But Trump’s behavior has given me doubts about this though. He’s always had a knack for telling his base what it wants to hear. But he’s clearly not doing that here, and uniquely it is hurting standing with his base, and well as looking incredibly suspect to everyone else. Why would he do that unless there was something in there?
He sneared and exclaimed “What? you’re out of 14 and 15 year olds!”
and now his DOJ is denying there was an Epstein list of clients
As mentioned earlier, they might be telling a selective truth. Alan Dershowitz says that the DOJ has a list of clients that, through their investigation, they’ve been able to put together. What the memo said was that Epstein didn’t, himself, have a single collective list.
Explain something to me – it seems to be an article of faith here and elsewhere that there are still hidden “files” which contain interesting revelations. Meanwhile I read this article in the NYT which says:
The imagined center of the “Epstein files” has long been his supposed “client list.” But how much of Epstein’s life is still secret? Gawker published his address book a full decade ago; New York magazine delivered an annotated version in 2019 and Business Insider a searchable version the next year. There followed investigations by The Times and The Wall Street Journal, prolific enough that they now have their own landing pages, and depositions and civil suits and a public criminal trial for Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime partner in crime. The Epstein flight logs were made public in 2021, the same year that Michael Wolff published an astonishing account of Epstein’s final months, including the long transcript of an interview that Steve Bannon conducted with Epstein. Bannon has said he is sitting on 15 hours of material; Wolff says his own audio recordings run about a hundred hours. In one clip released just before the election, Epstein calls himself Trump’s “closest friend.”
Is there actually any evidence that files containing significant further revelations exist? Or is it - as the author of the NYT article posits - simply a case of conspiracy theorists (amusingly on both sides of the Democrat/Republican divide) simply assuming that such material must exist because what has been released to date doesn’t confirm their assumptions?
I am reminded of Stringer Bell’s admonishment of an underling at their drug dealer meeting:
“Is you takin’ notes of a CRIMINAL FUCKIN’ CONSPIRACY?” [snatch, rip]
I consider it completely plausible that someone as smart as Epstein would do no such thing (or that if he did he sure as hell would have disposed of them the second law enforcement began sniffing round).
… and yeah sure the current clowns running the US govt have teased the release of Shocking New MaterialTM twice now, but they are clowns. The first time was a nothing burger and the second time they mysteriously reneged. You might say "well if they reneged it shows there must be something in the Shocking New MaterialTM that is embarrassing. It’s equally plausible that the Shocking New MaterialTM had nothing new and was just going to remind people of The Orange One’s involvement so he issued one of his ill-advised off-the-cuff dictats that the material should not be (re)released, not realising this would cause a shitstorm.
I have a feeling any evidence related to Trump is being destroyed right now. Wasn’t there a volume of the Mueller report that said something to the effect of “this MF is definitely guilty of something but we can’t prove it because he successfully destroyed all the evidence before we could look into it”?
Whelp, that’s good enough for me.
If I was there and I knew they were destroying evidence, I’d certainly do my best to record them in the process and get that information out to the public. I hope someone is doing that. I guess it won’t be too long until Trump stabs Bondi and/or Patel and/or Bongino in the back and they decide they don’t want to protect the world’s biggest pedophile anymore. But by that point, it will probably be their word against his for all that is worth.
So we are going to skip right over the whole “is someone destroying evidence?” and go straight to “I hope someone is recording them doing so”?
You are making my point for me.
If the Feds have a copy of Epstein’s voluminous black book (with names of associates far exceeding names of perps, article link repeated here) Trump is in it maybe 14 times. Trump doesn’t want his name released in an official capacity. Is there more? Who knows? That’s enough.
But yeah, Trump knows what he did, but he doesn’t know what’s in the files. Bondi may have told Trump that she hasn’t reviewed all the files but she knows there’s nothing there. Trump would be used to such roundabout criminal discussions. His imagination may have very well blown past actual evidence.
Other perspectives: Judd Legum: “Trump’s new position that the Epstein files were “made up” by Democrats is a strong indication that they are extremely damaging to Trump.” Me: maybe.
I was going to write about all of the things I care more about than the Epstein case (including MAGA’s reaction to Trump’s coverup) but honestly I probably don’t have to go into detail. Suffice it to say that I think a half point change in the unemployment rate would merit more concern at this stage.
No they are more than “gentlemen’s agreements” and they are enforceable. Exactly how they are enforced will vary.
From the Wikipedia article on plea bargaining:
Santobello v. New York added that when plea bargains are broken, remedies exist; and it has been argued that given the prevalence of plea agreements, the most important rights of the accused may be found in the law of contracts rather than the law of trial procedure.[9]