“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.
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.)