Given the probably reluctance of most victims to come forward, active concealment by (apparently) multiple large banks (Deutsche Bank was sued and settled with New York, and now JP Morgan by USVI), investigators getting proof beyond a reasonable doubt even if there aren’t powerful people with law enforcement connections with an interest in derailing investigations and accountability (there’s at least some reason to suspect something like that was involve in his wrist-slap the first time he was arrested, if not also beyond that, and certainly his rumored clients suggest that if there was, it might have been more about protecting them – and thus extend beyond his death – than about protecting him.)
“spook agencies” don’t make prosecutorial or law enforcement investigation decisions (outside of those within their own investigative jurisdiction where they are also law enforcement agencies, which US ones, other than FBI to the extent you consider that a “spook agency”, aren’t) directly. If they were involved, they would be an example of a powerful actor exerting influence on law enforcement / prosecutorial agencies. Which would be consistent with the possibly I said had some grounds to suspect.
OTOH, there are other actors (including many of the individual reputed clients) that also might have, on their own and through their own connections, significant ability to sway law enforcement decisions if it was important to them, and significant motive to do so if they really were Epstein’s clients. “Spook agencies” make good targets for weakly-evidenced conspiracy theories, because people take suspicious events plus the lack of clear evidence of a particular actor as evidence that clandestine professionals are involved.
I am genuinely interested in your views on ‘how’ would we ever obtain “clear evidence” regarding matters that involve intelligence agencies acting well outside of the law. “14,342 JFK assassination records still contain redactions in 2022” according to a cursory search.
I’m not sure how that inference is drawn, but that is absolultely not part of my world-view, in general or as it pertains to this case; intelligence agencies could either be a source of influence in pursuit of their legal mission, or vehicles of informal influence for other parties.
> I am genuinely interested in your views on ‘how’ would we ever obtain “clear evidence” regarding matters that involve intelligence agencies acting well outside of the law.
Often, we wouldn’t, short of someone inside who knows where evidence is to be found preserving and revealing it, and even then validating that it is genuine might be difficult.
> The Foreign Office suspected that Maxwell was a secret agent of a foreign government, possibly a double agent or a triple agent, and "a thoroughly bad character and almost certainly financed by Russia". He had known links to the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), to the Soviet KGB, and to the Israeli intelligence service Mossad.[52] Six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence services attended Maxwell's funeral in Israel, while Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogised him and stated: "He has done more for Israel than can today be told."[53]
For this reason, espionage has often been something of a family business — the children meet the contacts of the parent, and thereby essentially inherit the store.
You should instead be thinking: She's purveying wildly illegal services for rich and high-profile people, and her father worked for an intelligence agency. In the unlikely event the IC wasn't involved in the beginning, why would they not approach her post-hoc?
You don't need "cover" to be a good spy. You just need information and contacts. Cover is a tool to get those, because most people aren't as dumb as Bill Gates.
Interestingly though, most of the time public or powerful figures go to jail it's not (or not mainly) for the crime assumed, it's for 'Lying to the Feds' (see Martha Stewart for example). It's notoriously hard and time consuming to put away the big time criminals because they have big time resources and connections.
I was given an opportunity to be 'interviewed' while being detained. The agents presented a letter from the AUSA basically outlining what they were looking for and explaining how it would be in my best interest to cooperate with the investigation. lol..
There were 9 other people involved, it was pretty big national news at the time.
It was almost two years later that the DOJ indicted me.
The Speedy Trial concerns are completely different depending on if you're in government custody or not.
"Privilege" derives from the words for "private law". The privileged operate under different rules from the rest of us.
That doesn't mean they can't ever be taken down, but it does mean that when they are, it looks different than when law enforcement sets its sights on one of us.
When it comes to poor people cops will do shit like throw a baton on the ground, put a suspects hand on it, and then claim they had gone for their weapon, beating them and taking them in for arrest right away.
When it comes to the "elite" they make a nice phone call and ask them when it would be convenient to come in for "questioning" because "we couldn't possibly arrest such an upstanding citizen" which is code for "we don't fuck with this guy because he butters our bread."
If only law enforcement faced severe penalties for abusing their power, given they should be held to a higher standard of demonstrating good values and restraint in such roles in society.
I’m not saying it to be rude to you I’m saying as a disgusted criticism of our failure to apply justice equally.
Source: one who turned a blind eye while facilitating and regrets it greatly
Generally, not, AFAICT. State laws (in some cases, under a federal mandate requiring states to do so to receive federal funds) designate a variety of mandatory reporters (one of the most universal of which is health care providers), but there is no federal universal reporting mandate.
Ok but where is the evidence? I don't think the cops can just showup to Epstain's associates door and try to snatch confessions without evidence. They have lawyers. Why would they confess?
Flying to an island on his plane (even after everything we know about that has happened on that island residence) does not itself indicate any wrong doing -- they have to fond more evidence that links the threads together. If they charge or show their hands before they have enough it sets various clocks in motion that can harm the long term cases.
I have faith they are still working as many of these as they can looking for charges -- its only faith.
That’s…not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Heck, its probably not even probable cause of any crime.
> There is plenty of evidence here to get started on a charge
There is evidence enough to open investigations, sure. Law enforcement agencies don’t generally announce that.
Whether there is evidence to do more than that is…speculation.
Even were I to agree that that is true, the empaneling of a grand jury and the issuing of subpoenas is done secretly. We only know of the criminal grand jury that is empaneled for Trump in D. C. because Trump’s extremely irregular legal challenge over the docs seized at Mar-a-lago revealed it.
I believe there was also large amounts of unusual concrete formations outside of one of the properties that suggested something may have been hidden. That would probably take some time to pick apart.
Epstein had a bunch of stuff going on in the finance world and was a philanthropist. His black book was full of contacts related to those activities.
Same with the flight records. His island was a hub for his legitimate (or legitimate appearing) activities. There were plenty of people who had reason to visit his island to arrange business deals, or to try to convince him to fund their cause, or to attend conferences that were hosted there without knowing that he also ran a sex trafficking operation there.
That makes merely being in the black book or flight records a pretty weak signal on its own that someone was involved in the sex trafficking.
I do think it's clear he didn't have any really legitimate businesses. Even in the best case he was donating money to largely unproductive research and pop science in order to flatter himself, and the "conferences" are well attested to not be particularly intellectually rigorous.
The large number of CDs and hard drives recovered from the 2019 raid on his New York apartment seems a much more likely source of usable evidence.
even the very protections victims receive in US courts are a mark of our inability to approach sex itself with a mature demeanor. we'd rather soldier on in silence, discipline, and remorse than honestly atone for real crime. that a victim themselves may succor the courage to face their attacker in court, is such a vicious affront that we're given no choice but to prosecute or lose face.
This is definitely the case, and is one of the reasons I won’t go farther than suggesting there is reason to suspect specific corrupt influence on this case. It looks pretty bad, but a lot of the prosecution (or not) of sex crimes just doesn’t get attention, and looks as bad or worse when examined closely. There may be specific corrupt influence, and there are lots of directions that could have come from, but it also could be just the general attitude of tolerance for sex crimes in the US. Conspiracies are sexier, and allow one to ignore the glaring societal/broad systemic problem and pass off responsibility.
I do support the idea that someone accused of a crime needs to be proven guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt. The nature of these crimes often results in a he said/she said scenario where the crime can't be easily proven. Only in these scenarios where the dam breaks and dozens of accusers come forth do these predators receive justice.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/nyregion/prince-andrew-vi...
[1] edited from Prince Albert
Prince Andrew; to my knowledge, no Prince Albert has been connected with Epstein.
> there was a private settlement with the victim with the strongest case.
In theory, a private settlement of civil charges does not protect against criminal charges arising from the same conduct.
A civil settlement cannot include a condition prohibiting someone from testifying or otherwise cooperating with a criminal investigation, and one which purported to do so would be void.
Void as in not enforceable in court, of course.
Void as in the witness still gets paid? Depends on how it’s structured.
Not only would such an NDA be unenforceable, offering (in so far as that implies a threat to enforce) and even moreso directly threatening to enforce one for that purpose (leveraging the other parties lack of knowledge that it was unenforceable or fear of the consequences of a lawsuit even without merit) would seem to be witness tampering, a separate crime.
If approached by a cutout attorney (using attorney client privilege and on behalf of ‘anonymous friends’), payments from blind trusts not associated with the royal family, and a couple layers of that most of it offshore, and only a very determined investigation with a lot of international pull is getting anywhere. And the signs are pretty clear, that isn’t happening in a case like this.
The incentives are aligned such, that I doubt such an agreement would even need to be written down.
With the connections and pull within the gov’t the royal family has, any attempt to even track it down would likely get someone shut down, even in the FBI or CIA. But maybe I’m just imagining things.
The gag clause expires in the next few months.
As for the piercing…I’ll let people Google that themselves
The meaningful question is, how and in what ways is it true, and who what where and when? And what shall we do about it?
> Is there a legitimate reason so few people have been charged in the case of Epstein?
I bet reason is: ten years didn't pass yet. Wait, no... It's actually a reason of all that...
But there is much more we can learn from that story.
Victims: https://www.npr.org/2021/07/20/1017968999/jeffrey-epsteins-v...
Ghislaine the Coaxer: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/29/1066219689/ghislaine-maxwell-...
Looks Epstein house wasn't a sex-or-no-heroine-for-ya mafia shop. Girls was lured there - "they had a playbook" - with promises of opportunities and bunch of good heart faking. And shopping sprees. By someone out of the blue suddenly throwing money...
Still, as I read somewhere, similiar to mafia where trafficking is often mafia's woman job.
Girls was also choosed - troubles in family or [attr humanity=off] System [attr] experience...
Looks like total top-down fackup - from politicians to minor kids. Nothing much differen form what was[1] happening for thousend of years before. But now we trying to not accept this anymore.
So:
- first, nothing can replace good family with parents dedicated for life to their childrens
- we need to do something with kids wanting or maybe needeing money... Steam skins for cents is just extracted essence of that. Why minors started to needs money so much ? That is civilizational problem.
Also some % of mionors "sex marked" is just that - minors wants money... Spare me usual idiotic fact denial on that and show me a way to avoid that.
- we need good after hours care for kids. Not only official schools but but after hours too. DO NOT MAKE IT MANDATORY IN ANY CASE, school is enough of that.
Boy Scouts was good attempt, worked or is working for century now. But predators infiltrate it.
- and here is main problem: a) predators "volunteere", b) no one notice (maybe) and then c) they take over institution. There was "private tutors" in England - kids moved to teachers homes. Yes, personal education is better then public, but gues what ? There was systematic abuses ! Is it when and why anti-homosexualinsts law passed in England (or it was from earlier) ?
There is a clear pattern: pedophiles destroy educational systems. That they destroy lifes for life is already known and all over the media and spy industry and legislation too with potential of destroing results. Yea, f* education, right ?
- we do need official method of requiring and teaching more and more responsibility from kids - so they could be self sustained adults. Old ways of that was destroyed by changes in lifestyle (which are not bad in itself (except megacities - that need to be stopped))
- we need to learn to be not rich - especially public servants, military, priests, teachers and academia LOL. Not poor - it guarantee coruption in "services". Made it official: You want to be rich ? Get out of public service ! Of course negative way is not a way, we need good reasons to stay in. Maybe by striving to do art or nice things at least. For now anything remotely nice is "premium" and "premium" is for stupid peoples - there is no such value as "premium" ! There is just quality, effort and resources.
Just keep watching for parasites as phedophiles in kids related organizations and appropriately to the organization purpose, eg. health or education or environment or IT controlling agencies - meltdowns of the last decades is... in same scale as Babel tower building effort.
Also as society we need get over that "be rich" lure. Just build homes for everyone and then more and then give them as gifts. Problem moustly solved ! Maybe. I read yesterday JPMorgan volunteered for that, right ? Just build and cede ownership rights.
Make them easily repairable for 2 centuries and keep building publicly owned or very cheaply available replacements for what's damaged. Yes, very cheaply available quality houses. It's quite a time for new goverment responsibilities. That's different from setting rules for others.
- there should be scientific research about "gentlemans" - must be rich and 4 generations needed to create true gentleman ? Looks like pre-scientific observation. But looks like some level of financial independence do psychological change in life - you gain some peace when you do not need to be in constant panic for lack of food and shelter with money as proxy of that. Also this is usually achieved via education. And not without training in some ethic...
Possible in XIX we can do better then 4 generations...
See SBF, released on bail, immediately started stealing money from Alemeda and FTX wallets. Why the fuck does he have unsupervised access to a computer? Because we suck at this.