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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.