This should have been a story about how the wealthy and powerful get away with murder, or at least sex trafficking of minors. It begins in March 2005 when a 14-year-old girl and her parents tell police the child and a classmate were offered cash to come to the Palm Beach home of Bear Stearns partner Jeffrey Epstein and give him a massage. The girls claimed they were sexually molested.
In May 2006, Epstein and two associates are charged with multiple counts of “unlawful sex acts with a minor.” The case is referred by the state attorney to a grand jury. The grand jury returns an indictment of one count of solicitation of prostitution without mentioning the victim is a minor.
At the request of the Palm Beach police chief, the FBI opens a federal investigation resulting in a 53 page indictment based on testimony from multiple victims from Florida, New York and New Mexico. The grand jury also subpoenaed Epstein’s computers which had been removed from his residence prior to his arrest.
Fast forward to August 2007. Alexander Acosta, the U.S. attorney at the time, begins negotiations for a plea agreement. Just in case that name sounds familiar, Acosta is the current Secretary of Labor appointed by Donald Trump. As the negotiations begin, Acosta sets aside the subpoena seeking access to Epstein’s computers. By October, there is a tentative plea agreement which includes three quite unusual provisions.
- The victims are not to be notified of the plea agreement (in violation of the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act).
- The terms of the plea agreement will be permanently sealed.
- All grand jury subpoenas will be cancelled.
The deal is rejected by Epstein’s lawyers and negotiations continue for seven months. Finally, on June 30, 2008, Epstein pleads guilty to one count of solicitation with a prostitute and one count of solicitation with a minor under the age of 18. Remember, the girl was a lot under 18. She was 14 at the time. Epstein is sentenced to 18 months in prison and required to register in Florida as a convicted sex offender. He is released five months early and is confined for one year to his Palm Beach home except to commute to his office to conduct business.
In November 2009, one of Epstein’s butlers Alfredo Rodriguez tries to sell his employer’s “black book” with names of hundreds of girls and young women to an undercover FBI agent. Following his arrest he begins cooperating with authorities at which time it is revealed the location of potentially illegal activities included Epstein’s home in the Virgin Islands. The victims and “guests” often flew to the site on Epstein’s private jets. In 2010, as part of a civil lawsuit, the plaintiff’s lawyers obtain the flight logs and passenger manifests. You would recognize several of the names which I have omitted because, at this time, none have been convicted of any crime although some of the now-grown women who have since filed civil suits against Epstein claim they were raped by individuals who appear on the manifests.
Much of the above is taken from the outstanding investigative reporting by the Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown including a November 28, 2018 timeline of the case under the title, “Perversion of Justice.” If Brown’s reporting is accurate, many of the recent #metoo exposés pale in comparison. This involves the trafficking of children for sexual purposes and powerful men who used them to satisfy their overactive libidos.
But today, that is not what this story is about. This morning, from the top of their show at 6:00am, Mika Brzezinki and Joe Scarborough promised an explosive story about Epstein and “what is being called the most lenient sentence in the history of sexual offenses.” The fact it involves a member of Trump’s cabinet makes it more newsworthy.
A few of the victims have gone public. Some have settled their civil suits before going to trial. Would one or more tell their stories? Had they booked Brown to share how she broke the story? Finally, someone was giving these women the attention they deserve.
Or so I thought. It is now 8:40 a.m. I understand. There was other news. 41’s funeral. Congressional rebuke of Trump’s version of the Khashoggi murder. Republican voter fraud in North Carolina. Republican legislators limiting the power of newly elected Democratic governors in Wisconsin and Michigan. But did we really need another story comparing Ivanka’s use of personal email to Hillary Clinton? Or an interview about lessons learned in the mid-terms with the newly elected chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee?
I’m sorry Joe and Mika. Haven’t these young women been abused enough already? Did you really need to use them again as teasers to hold your viewers? SHAME!
For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP
There are two buildings on which I know this verse to be prominently displayed. The first is Upham Hall at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. For my first five years as a faculty member, I would see this message every morning on the way to my office on the second floor. It was a constant reminder my primary job was not teaching students how to write a business plan. Instead, the goal was enabling students to observe, dissect and analyze information and their own experience to better understand the world in which they lived.
Thus, any Redhawks’ hopes of basking on Bahamian beaches over winter break vanished in an Oxford minute.