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Comment by stickfigure | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot of conspiracy theory in there. All this stuff about intelligence assets and blackmail and murder to keep him quiet is all too exciting in a made-for-tv kind of way. How do we know he wasn't just some rich dude who wanted to bang underage chicks and thought he could get away with it? It seems like the occam's razor answer.

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I didn't say intelligence asset, I said alleged intelligence asset. This isn't conspiracy theory, it the reason stated by the prosecutor for why he let him plea to a no-time deal instead of going with charges that fit his crimes.

> Acosta informed the Trump presidential transition team that he offered a lenient plea deal because he was told that Epstein "belonged to intelligence", was "above his pay grade," and to "leave it alone".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Acosta

It is possible that he didn't belong to intelligence -- but still got people within the DOJ to assert falsely that he was so that he could be exempt from the consequences of his crimes. It just goes to show the core of my post's assertions, that Epstein was exempt from the normal criminal process for decades due to his position as a prominent child sex trafficker.

Seems like the more relevant paragraph from the Acosta article is this one:

> Acosta has variously stated that he was not directly involved in the unusual agreement, that prosecutors determined it to be the best available solution, and that he "was unduly pressured by Epstein's heavy-hitting lawyers." He also has argued the prosecution team believed conviction by trial in federal court was unlikely, and an agreement would therefore be the best way to put an end to Epstein's exploitation of underage girls.

Any conversation with Trump's presidential transition team happened 8 years after the plea agreement. Maybe Acosta is just trying to make himself look better. I wouldn't read too much into that.

Nah, later review by DoJ suggests that Acosta chickened out for some reason.

I would concur that it is possible that it is only Acosta making the claim that Jeffrey Epstein belonged to intelligence. If this is true, it is still a materially relevant agent of the Department of Justice making the claim that Epstein belonged to intelligence and using that claim to justify his no-time plea deal. Even if the only person doing so is Acosta, the claim is still true.

Which, to me, takes this outside the realm of "conspiracy theory" and into the realm of what the DOJ prosecutor is lying about.

> and an agreement would therefore be the best way to put an end to Epstein's exploitation of underage girls.

If this were actually the motivation instead of sweeping it under the rug, he could have still been sentenced to prison (plea agreements are just paper making recommendations to a judge -- the judge can sentence however they wish) and also heavily publicizing that he at least has been convicted of child sexual exploitation instead of quietly resolving it with no punishment in shadows and secrecy. We know that Epstein was certainly engaging in pimping after -- even hosting Bill Gates at a mansion known to be a site of thinly veiled prostitution labeled as massage therapy.

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