You have to remember that Federal investigations don't work like that. They don't arrest (even if it appears obvious) and then build evidence; they build a strong case quietly then arrest (look up Prenda Law for a good story on this).

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.

They do work like that. My house was raided as part of an investigation. It was about two years after the search that the DOJ indicted me for conspiracy to commit copyright infringement..

Interesting! Would you mind elaborating?

there's nothing to elaborate. his story is one of millions of examples where regular people are treated harsher by the law than rich and powerful.

Yes. The FBI and DHS agents arrested and detained me while they searched my house.

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.

Right, but you were presumably not detained for more than a small amount of hours and not placed in pretrial detention?

The Speedy Trial concerns are completely different depending on if you're in government custody or not.

Tell that to the people rotting in Rikers without trial

I think that would be precisely zero people? Unless you're confusing New York state with the federal government?

You were not differentiating. You simply said "in government custody"

The differentiation was already made much earlier in this thread.

And how many A-list law firms can you call on at a moment's notice? How many banks can you order around?

"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.

Having dealt with “shoot first, ask questions later” asset forfeiture cases, in my own life and some of my friends’, I have to say this is more of an idealistic view post Wars on Drugs and Terror.

To be clear I'm talking about large scale, mostly white collar crimes, not the things everyday folk get caught up in.

That's literally the fucking problem. Two legal systems, one for "elite" where they get a fucking slap on the wrist, and one for the "poors" where you get the living shit beat out of you and end up with a hospital bill and a charge for "resisting" arrest when they twisted your arm so hard that you involuntarily resisted the movement.

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."

relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeOVbeh2yr0

Indeed, being able to tell a cop you'll have your long list of very expensive lawyers contact them has a habit of slowing them down amazingly quickly.

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.

You just aren’t wealthy powerful and or white enough.

I’m not saying it to be rude to you I’m saying as a disgusted criticism of our failure to apply justice equally.

Exactly how white do you have to be?

One mustn't consider the Saudi<->Instagram "influencer" (or "brand ambassador") pipeline if you want to keep your sanity.

Source: one who turned a blind eye while facilitating and regrets it greatly

"Privileged White" of course

A lot of the time the feds deliberately try and trap you into lying to them, either so they at least get something, or so they can use it as leverage to get you to inform on someone else.

In the United States there has to be evidence of a specific crime. Being an associate of a scumbag isn’t illegal, nor is having taken a flight.

Very interesting perspective, considering that iirc, failure to report the specific crime of child sex trafficking / rape is a crime itself.

> Failure to report the specific crime of child sex trafficking / rape is a crime itself.

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.

>> failure to report the specific crime of child sex trafficking / rape is a crime itself.

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?

I think this is what takes time -- they have to build more than a circumstantial case that the crime was committed and as you said the suspect is not going to confess so they have a large hill to climb.

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.

> There’s literally a black book with names in it, as well as flight records.

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.

There's enough evidence to start writing subpoenas, which is really how this process works. They don't generally start with enough evidence to convict, they start with enough to compel people to give them more.

> There's enough evidence to start writing subpoenas, which is really how this process works.

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.

Not just a book but rooms full of DVD's recording the activities for blackmail and extortion. AFAIK the feds seized all the DVD's from the CCTV rooms at each of his properties. IIRC the room was cleared at one of the properties because they were tipped off. Curious if this ends up in a documentary. The raids, not the actual DVD footage

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 was not some cartoon super-villain whose every endeavor was directly in furtherance of his sex trafficking operation. Real world major bad guys almost never actually work like that. They almost almost always have major legitimate (or legitimate appearing) businesses and activities they spend considerable effort on too.

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.

To this day I'm not sure if anyone is really sure whether Epstein's "philanthropy" was just another avenue of his sexual abuse (cf the stories about his "scientific" interest in his own genetics), or a "cost" to launder his reputation allowing him to continue it, or if both were tools for an intelligence service's broader aims.

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.

It isn't a crime to know Epstein and it also isn't a crime to fly on his plane.

Being in an address book or on a flight is not going to be able to convict anyone.

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.