The swirling South Florida scandal surrounding former Palm Beach hedge-fund billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and his sexual abuse of at least 37 underage females over a period of at least five years, continues to widen and the outlook is not good for Epstein, to say the least.
The case is not going away any time soon and Epstein has good reason to worry. Bill and Hillary Clinton are among VIPs who also have reason to be concerned.
In June 2008, Epstein managed to walk away, virtually without a scratch, from a conviction in Palm Beach County, of one count of solicitation of prostitution. The affidavit in the case listed five minor victims, one just 14 years old. The outraged parents of this 14-year-old complained to the Palm Beach police. An investigation uncovered serious sexual crimes against children as well as trafficking of children to A-listers who were pals of Epstein on a regular, ongoing basis.
Given the extensive and appalling nature of Epsteins abuse of barely-teenage girls, Palm Beach police expected Epstein to face vigorous prosecution as a prolific and dangerous child-sex predator with multiple victims in Florida alone. They would be sorely disappointed, as would be the outraged Palm Beach community.
In a practically unheard of legal maneuver, the Florida prosecutor declined to file charges, instead bringing the allegations before a grand jury, a venue normally reserved strictly for capital offenses in the state of Florida. The state prosecution, well aware of how to maneuver a grand jury to indict a defendant on only those charges prosecutors really want to pursue, emerged with perhaps the least of the charges for which Epstein could be tried and convicted, a charge carrying only a 5-year maximum sentence.
To add insult to the injury done to justice by this incredibly lenient, preferential treatment given to an ultra-rich, politically-connected pedophile, Epstein received a mere 15-month sentence. He ended up serving barely 13 months in the county jail, and only during nighttime, at that. He was free to go to his office daily and even took trips to New York during his incarceration.
Incredibly, Epstein evaded federal prosecution entirely, despite the interstate and international nature of Epsteins sexual exploitation of underage teen girls. In a highly-dubious Non-Prosecution Agreement (NPA) forged by Epsteins defense attorneys and the government, Epsteins prosecution was left entirely to Florida authorities. The NPA reads like a defense attorneys wet dream. In it, the government essentially folded its cards, and nearly everyone involved in the case in Epsteins camp was granted immunity from federal prosecution.
The feds effectively affirmed Epsteins lenient treatment in state court, removing any further criminal jeopardy for Epstein or so he thought. As it turns out, Epsteins victims were completely excluded from this secret deal-making process and, worse, the astonishing terms of this NPA were purposefully concealed from the victims until after it was already a done deal. Accordingly, in July 2008, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that prosecutors violated the Crime Victims Rights Act by failing to inform Epsteins victims of the deal until after it was concluded.
That same month, July 2008, Fort Lauderdale attorney Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell, a former federal judge from Utah, sued the federal government in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, accusing Epstein of committing numerous sex crimes against their clients, including child-sex trafficking by fraud, an offense punishable by up to decades of federal incarceration.
Edwards and Cassells Jane Doe case languished in federal court for nearly six years, the details of Epsteins deal with the feds sealed from the public and from use in any other forum, and thus out of bounds from discovery in the Jane Doe action. In June 2014, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the seal lifted, finally allowing for scrutiny of the details of the dubious deal given Epstein. Now the rotten NPA by which Epsteins many victims were deceived and ultimately betrayed by the feds was open for a direct challenge and subject to the rigors of real judicial scrutiny. Epsteins subsequent last-ditch pleas to the court for a Protective Confidentiality Order were denied.
The case, now broken wide open by the exposure of Epsteins special federal deal, gave the Cassell-Edwards team a green light, and they wasted no time raising the stakes for Epstein. In December 2014 they filed a bombshell pleading in which Jane Doe No. 3, Virginia Roberts, accused Epstein of forcing her to have sex with a number of Epsteins powerful friends, naming, among others, Prince Andrew and none other than Epsteins criminal defense mastermind himself, Alan M. Dershowitz. Roberts also named a former governor, former U.S. senator, former prime minister and a Fortune 500 billionaire among those who were supplied under-age girls for sex.
Dershowitz went ballistic, taking to the airwaves in a mighty, seething rage, slinging serious accusations of professional misconduct against Edwards and Cassell, accusing them of defaming Dershowitz and knowingly filing false pleadings. Edwards and Cassell wasted no time responding, but not in Dershowitzs preferred venue of broadcast media. Instead, they promptly filed a civil action against Dershowitz seeking damages for Dershowitzs professional defamation.
The legal house of cards constructed by Epsteins defense team, in league with inexplicably limp federal prosecutors, now looks to be collapsing around him. With high-profile power elites being fingered as co-conspirators in Epsteins heinous sex crimes, the bottom may well fall out completely for Epstein, and soon. Now that the lid is off Epsteins unseemly sweetheart get-out-of-jail-free deal with the feds -- and it will be examined in light of its foundational violation of statutory victims rights -- the jig may be up for Epstein.
If Virginia Roberts lawyers can convince the court to void the Non-Prosecution Agreement, Epstein will likely face renewed prosecution, no longer shielded by the secrecy and legal machinations by which the previous federal prosecutors in the case literally gave away the store, without the slightest facial or even implicit justification, legal, moral or otherwise.
This is where Bill ... and Hillary Clinton's vulnerability comes in. Former President Bill Clinton visited the hedonistic private island of the billionaire pedophile, according to the New York Post. According to flight records, Bill was on Epstein's plane 17 times .Epstein even pleaded the Fifth Amendment when asked about his relationship with Clinton and whether Clinton was supplied with underage girls. Now this new lawsuit may compel the former president to testify under oath about what he was doing there. The New York Post reported that Hillary is furious that Bill is mired in the scandal. Is this the scandal that ends Hillary's 2016 bid ?
Constant public attention, sensational media exposure and the righteous outrage of Epsteins victims will provide more than enough pressure to prompt federal prosecutors to do the right thing this time around. Epstein may have dodged a bullet in Palm Beach County in 2008, but if his victims and their intrepid legal team have their way in U.S. District Court in Florida, Epstein may soon face a knockout salvo -- this time for keeps.
The sordid tale of this billionaire pedophile, onetime Friend-of-Bills, what Bill Clinton was doing on his island, will persist -- not because it has now drawn in well-connected elites, but because justice has yet to be served, because Epsteins victims have yet to be vindicated and deserve justice.
Roger J. Stone Jr., with offices in Florida and Washington, D.C., is a legendary political consultant and lobbyist who specializes in opposition research for the Republican National Committee. He has played a key role in the election of Republican presidents from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. He is also the author of "Nixon's Secrets: The Rise, Fall and Untold Truth about the President, Watergate and the Pardon," and earlier, "The Man Who Killed Kennedy -- the Case Against LBJ" (both by Skyhorse). This column is exclusive to Sunshine State News.
