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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> Is there a legitimate reason so few people have been charged in the case of Epstein?

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.)

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There's literally a black book with names in it, as well as flight records. There is plenty of evidence here to get started on a charge without the banks or victims cooperating.

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

Were you arrested? No? How is this supposed to refute the GP comment if not?

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 larger scale (or involving the 'elite' class) crimes, not the things everyday folk get caught up in, which generally proceed quite a bit quicker.

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.

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.

there is a tangible disinterest in prosecuting this --as well as most-- sex crimes in the united states. In many US states, rape kits used as pivotal evidence during trial are backlogged and processed at a near glacial rate or lost entirely. Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein are examples of a situation where power in the united states, combined with a longstanding puritanical distaste for sex, culminated in a decades long failure of justice.

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.

> there is a tangible disinterest in prosecuting this –as well as most– sex crimes in the united states.

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.

We (the US) love to blame the victims. Full stop.

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.

Not to mention Jimmy Saville in the UK

Why are we pussy footing around this? This affair has all the hallmarks of a state level blackmail operation run by CIA and Mossad. ("law enforcement" is a rather amusing label for spook agencies.)

How's Mossad involved? I'd think MI6 maybe.

Having no knowledge of this conspiracy theory, my guess would be that Ghislaine Maxwell is Israeli and harbored there after Epstein’s arrest.

Ghislaine Maxwell is the daughter of Robert Maxwell, who was a suspected Mossad spy. Per Wikipedia:

> 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]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell

Ok but how does that make his doughter a super spy?

Espionage, like all significant industries, relies heavily on one’s personal contacts. In the spy game, reputation and trust are much harder to build, given the necessary lack of transparency on all sides.

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.

But can the doughter be a good spy if it's well known her father was a spy and most likely she is a spy as well? I mean her cover is blown.

There's probably a good ("good") argument to be made that you shouldn't get your underage prostitutes via a famous spook's daughter, but those are not the contentious parts of the story; they're the facts.

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.

Nepo baby.

> This affair has all the hallmarks of a state level blackmail operation run by CIA and Mossad. (“law enforcement” is a rather amusing label for spook agencies.)

“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.

This line of reasoning is measured and sensible (and rest assured, this is appreciated). But there is an implicit assumption in your world view that intelligence agencies themselves are -not- subject to directions of powerful actors in the establishment. “Yale” and all that, but then we’re back to conspiracies, alas.

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.

> But there is an implicit assumption in your world view that intelligence agencies themselves are -not- subject to directions of powerful actors in the establishment.

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.

> Why are we pussy footing around this?

Same reason we pussy foot around any topic that puts attention on the corruption of the wealthy and their connections. This website is owned by, and has its content moderated in lockstep with, wealthy holders of capital.

Putting due spotlight on that will get your content removed.

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