Epstein, PROMIS, Pedophilia, under-age sex, intelligence agent and more - GREAT!!!

[Peter Lemkin]

Will Ghislaine Maxwell Trial Reveal Jeffrey Epstein Secrets?
Gabriella Lombardo
11/29/21
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[url=https://whowhatwhy.org/justice/criminal-justice/will-ghislaine-maxwell-trial-reveal-jeffrey-epstein-secrets/?utm_source=WhoWhatWhy+Now&utm_campaign=5347557acd-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2_1_2021_16_41_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6b3f79a618-5347557acd-251507385#shared-counts-email]
Ghislaine Maxwell is used to being the woman of the hour. The 59-year-old British aristocrat was a fixture of the London and New York social scenes throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, rubbing shoulders and champagne flutes with an international cast of power players that included two US presidents and at least one prince. In her jet-setting, party-hopping days, she allegedly lived a double life as a groomer of girls, serving up underage victims to Jeffrey Epstein and the megawatt men who moved alongside him. 
All eyes are again on Maxwell as her trial opens in Manhattan federal court, just steps from the lower Manhattan jail where Epstein was found dead in his cell two years ago. The charges against her for her role in Epstein’s decades-long international sex abuse ring include six counts related to child sex trafficking in the decade spanning 1994 to 2004, involving four girls — the youngest aged 14. The alleged crimes occurred at Epstein’s residences in Manhattan, Palm Beach, and New Mexico, as well as Maxwell’s London apartment. 
Maxwell faces a separate trial, as yet unscheduled, for an additional two counts of perjury for statements she made in connection with a long-settled 2015 defamation suit against her. If convicted on all counts, Maxwell could face 80 years in prison. She has always denied any involvement in, or knowledge of, Epstein’s crimes, and pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Epstein’s death in federal custody in 2019 left Maxwell bearing the brunt of public outrage at the chronic mishandling of his sex crimes by law enforcement and the courts. Still, Maxwell’s time with Epstein raises many questions: If she did indeed assist in his crimes, what motivated her? Was she in love with him? Was she aiding and abetting him in exchange for financial support? Apparently, not even Maxwell can explain the nature of her partnership with Epstein. We know that they were lovers, and at one point she was managing his households. But when asked in a 2016 deposition if she was Epstein’s girlfriend, she responded, “That’s a tricky question. There were times when I would have liked to think of myself as his girlfriend.” 
Contradictions abound. On the one hand, she is a wealthy, Parisian-born heiress with an Oxford education and an enviable black book. On the other hand, she is, like Epstein, a person “mysteriously made and mysteriously protected.”
So Maxwell goes to trial in Epstein’s stead. The challenge for her defense team will be to wash away that guilt by association — to sever her public image from Epstein’s. But Maxwell without the Epstein tinge is still a strange figure with a strange past. And a closer look at the woman of the hour brings up more questions than answers. 

War, Espionage, and a Rich Man’s Death
Maxwell appears to have entered Epstein’s life in the early 1990s, at around the same time his sophisticated sex trafficking operation began in earnest. According to his victims, it was Maxwell who recruited minors from schools, spas, and the streets, and delivered them to Epstein. Sometimes, the girls claim, she participated in the abuse, and trained them to recruit still more girls. 
But how Maxwell entered Epstein’s orbit is itself a strange story. It may have something to do with the death of her father, media baron Robert Maxwell.
A Czechoslovakian Jew born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch, Robert Maxwell fled to France as a teenager during the early years of World War II and eventually joined the British army, earning the rank of captain and a prestigious medal in 1945. While most of his family perished in the Holocaust, Maxwell became a naturalized British subject after the war and built a billion-dollar publishing empire that included the Daily Mirror and the New York Daily News. 
Maxwell had a mythic capacity for self-invention. He Anglicized himself, changing his name, adopting a posh British accent, and living like a lord at Headington Hill Hall, the massive Maxwell family estate in Oxford. 
In 1991, he was found dead in the sea off the Canary Islands. It was believed that he had fallen from his yacht — named the Lady Ghislaine after his supposed favorite child. 
There had long been rumors that Maxwell was an Israeli, Soviet, or British spy (or perhaps all three at once). These rumors compounded when he was given a state funeral in Israel and buried on the Mount of Olives. Reportedly, six current and former heads of Israeli intelligence were in attendance. 
Whispers of espionage reached a fever pitch when, weeks after his death, it was revealed that “Captain Bob” had looted nearly £500 million from the pension fund of his Mirror Group Newspapers. Today, speculation still swirls: Did he jump from his yacht? Was he pushed?

How They Met
The shadows of Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein flank Ghislaine Maxwell’s public image: The loss of one mysterious man led her straight into the arms of another, so the story goes. 
Some theorize that Robert Maxwell and Epstein knew each other before Ghislaine came into the picture. There are rumors that Maxwell had in fact introduced his daughter to Epstein. Miami Herald journalist Julie K. Brown, whose bombshell reporting brought massive additional attention to the Epstein case, claims in her new book that Maxwell hired Epstein in the 1980s to hide his money offshore. Maxwell’s status as a suspected spy, combined with the claims that Epstein’s sex trafficking ring operated as a honey trap for powerful men across the public and private sectors, make this theory, if true, a game changer in the Epstein case. 
But proof that Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein knew each other before her father’s death is scant. One piece of documentary evidence, however, might hold an eerie clue. It’s the first known photograph of Maxwell and Epstein, published by the Daily Mail in 2020. The photograph was taken in late 1991 at a memorial dinner for Robert Maxwell at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Epstein is seated next to Maxwell, and they’re smiling at each other. 
That photograph could be a tip-of-the-iceberg document. Why would Epstein be seated at her table, at her father’s memorial, if he were only a casual acquaintance? It’s a tantalizing narrative, to be sure: What if Robert Maxwell — a Jewish immigrant who elbowed his way into British aristocracy, built a massive (if rickety) empire, and is rumored to have had ties with Mossad and various figures in the international arms trade — knew Jeffrey Epstein, a college dropout from Brooklyn who built a similarly inscrutable empire from nothing and seems to have had ties to US intelligence? 
However they met, it’s said that Ghislaine Maxwell was the bridge between Epstein and the upper echelons of society — that she put an aristocratic gloss on Epstein’s image. Together, they were photographed at parties, charity galas, and fashion shows from 1991 to 2005. They were even invited by Prince Andrew, a friend of Maxwell’s, to the Queen’s beloved Sandringham estate (where the royal family traditionally spends Christmas) for a “straightforward shooting weekend” in December 2000. 
(Prince Andrew is currently locked in a civil suit with one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, née Roberts, who has long claimed that she was trafficked to the prince as a minor.)
Maxwell’s social graces and British charm are the very things that allegedly put Epstein’s victims at ease. Here was “the most elegant thing in the world,” as one of Maxwell’s accusers describes her, offering a job, easy money, or a modeling audition. She’s wearing Chanel or Ralph Lauren, sporting a perpetual pixie cut — swank but sophisticated in an old-world way. What’s not to trust? 

Just days before Epstein’s arrest, court records from Giuffre’s defamation suit against Maxwell were ordered unsealed, and the first batch of documents was released to the public in August 2019. The next day, Epstein was found dead in his prison cell.

Bonded in Crime
Although Epstein was allegedly sexually assaulting minors long before he and Maxwell met (one ongoing lawsuit places his earliest assault in 1978), it was during Maxwell’s tenure as his sometime-girlfriend and employee that he allegedly received massages from three girls a day, every day. His victims claim that he sexually assaulted them during these massages.
Dozens of Epstein’s accusers have spoken both on and off the record about the structure of his sex trafficking operation. Each girl received $200 for every massage she gave Epstein and $300 for every new girl she recruited. Some claim to have recruited upwards of 50 other girls from places like shopping malls and schools. And many allege that Maxwell was effectively managing the operation. 
All the while, Epstein’s proclivity for young girls — very young — was an open secret.
The dam should have broken in 2005, when the mother of one of his 14-year-old victims called the Palm Beach police. Michael Reiter, police chief at the time, launched an investigation. When he suspected state prosecutors were stalling, he contacted the FBI. That’s when Alex Acosta, then-US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, took over the case. In 2007, Acosta decided not to charge Epstein with federal sex crimes and instead signed a nonprosecution agreement, despite the fact that the FBI had interviewed some 40 victims. The “sweetheart deal” allowed Epstein to avoid federal prosecution by pleading guilty to lesser state charges. It also granted immunity to “any potential co-conspirators,” named or unnamed. 
Instead of lewd acts with a minor, Epstein was formally convicted of soliciting prostitution and procuring a minor for prostitution in 2008. The conviction has since been roundly criticized for, at the very least, flagrantly faulty logic: How can a minor (who, by definition, cannot consent) be rightly referred to as a sex worker? 
Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in the Palm Beach County Stockade — an odd landing place for a sex offender. He served just 13 months in custody, during which he was allowed to leave the jail on work release six days a week. 
With Epstein’s case closed and immunity granted to all co-conspirators, Maxwell was in the clear. Her time with a convicted sex offender didn’t seem to stain her reputation: She was photographed attending charity galas, the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, and Chelsea Clinton’s 2010 wedding. She popped up at policy events around the world between 2012 and 2015 promoting her ocean nonprofit, TerraMar. Under its auspices, she gave a TED Talk, attended the Clinton Global Initiative, and advocated for saving the oceans at the UN. Ostensibly a grant-making foundation, TerraMar never gave out more than a few hundred dollars. It was dissolved in December 2019, shortly after the New York Post reported that the charity was under FBI investigation for ties to Epstein. 

The Woman of the Hour Comes Into Focus
It wasn’t until 2015 that Maxwell’s protective bubble began to shrink. The timeline of mounting pressure was quick. In December 2014, Virginia Giuffre accused Maxwell of grooming and sexually assaulting her, beginning when Giuffre was 16 years old. Maxwell called Giuffre a liar and, in January 2015, Giuffre sued Maxwell for defamation. Crucially, Maxwell gave depositions in this suit in 2016. The perjury charges against her today stem from statements she made under oath in those depositions.
By late 2016, Maxwell had all but disappeared from the social circuit. She sold her New York townhouse and was married, in secret, to Scott Borgerson, a billionaire tech founder who has since stepped down as CEO of his maritime tracking company, CargoMetrics. 
Giuffre’s defamation suit was settled in 2017, with Maxwell reportedly paying millions. Epstein was bankrolling Maxwell’s legal bills until about 2017. And, last year, she sued his estate to recoup her legal costs, claiming that Epstein had promised to always fund her legal bills.
Then, in 2018, the dam broke for good when Julie K. Brown dusted off Epstein’s decade-old sweetheart deal. Brown’s Miami Herald exposé brought to light the expansive nonprosecution agreement brokered by Acosta (who was, by this time, serving as labor secretary in the Trump administration) that shielded Epstein and company from federal prosecution in 2008. The series sparked outrage, putting Epstein’s name back in the headlines and inspiring more victims to come forward.
In February 2019, a federal judge ruled that Acosta had illegally withheld the 2008 plea deal from Epstein’s more than 30 victims. The nonprosecution agreement that granted immunity to Epstein and “any potential co-conspirators” was thrown out, and all who were party to Epstein’s crimes became fair game. 
Five months later, Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. He had just gotten off a return flight from France. 
Just days before Epstein’s arrest, court records from Giuffre’s defamation suit against Maxwell were ordered unsealed, and the first batch of documents was released to the public in August 2019. The next day, Epstein was found dead in his jail cell. 
Maxwell is still fighting to keep documents from that defamation suit under seal, but they continue to be released to the public in batches. These documents — unsealed and largely unredacted — constitute the fullest picture we’ve had yet of Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. Among the documents are thousands of pieces of evidence: flight logs, email exchanges between Maxwell and Epstein, and, of course, Maxwell’s deposition transcripts. Those that have been unsealed can be read in full here.
Maxwell remained free for about a year after Epstein’s July 2019 arrest, and, in that time, the prosecution argues, she “made intentional efforts to avoid detection.”
She shuttered her nonprofit, TerraMar, and purchased her New Hampshire home, in cash, through an anonymous LLC. She moved hundreds of thousands of dollars around her accounts, registered a new phone number under “G Max,” and had packages delivered to her address under phony names. Court records show that she had a security detail of British ex-military guarding her home. 

The Knock She Must Have Expected
On the morning of July 2, 2020, the FBI raided Maxwell’s New Hampshire home, a sprawling property dubbed “Tuckedaway” for its wooded seclusion. They found a cellphone wrapped in tin foil on a desk — a move the prosecution called “a seemingly misguided effort to evade detection.”
Her arrest was the first major development in the Epstein case since the financier’s death in federal custody the year before. And Maxwell’s will be the first criminal case in the Epstein saga to make it to trial. (Her lawyers have not responded to a request for comment.) 
To date, Maxwell is one of two alleged co-conspirators to be criminally charged in relation to Epstein’s crimes. (The other is French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who was charged with rape and sexual assault of minors in December 2020 and is now in custody in Paris.) Given that she has an estimated $20 million across some 15 bank accounts, as well as British and French passports (France does not have an extradition treaty with the US), Maxwell was ruled an extreme flight risk. She has requested bail six times.
Maxwell’s trial is expected to last an estimated six weeks. As for her legal strategy, we know that “false memory” expert Elizabeth Loftus will testify as a witness for the defense, likely in an effort to dispute the recollections of Epstein’s victims. Loftus is known for having testified for the defense in many child molestation and sexual assault cases, including those of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, and Jerry Sandusky.
In the event of a guilty verdict, Maxwell’s legal team will most certainly file an appeal.
The Epstein saga is far from over, and our biggest questions remain unanswered: Who and what were really involved? And to what end? At any moment, a new piece of information could cause us to rip up everything we think we know about this case. 
And yet there is a sense that we’ve lived an entire lifetime with it — Epstein’s victims certainly have. Their fight for justice has been decades in the making, and it has included multiple state and federal investigations, a lawsuit against the federal government (that Epstein’s victims won), and countless other suits, countersuits, and appeals. So far, it’s caused a prince to step back from royal duties, a labor secretary of the United States to resign, and the heads of some of the world’s largest corporations to be ousted from their posts. 
Right now, we turn our attention toward Ghislaine Maxwell in anticipation of a spectacle that will likely prove short on answers. Perhaps only in the years of criminal and civil cases to come will we arrive at a fuller picture of the truth.

[Lauren Johnson]

My read?  It's scripted like an professional wrestling match in the US.


The lead prosecutor in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial is Maureen Comey, James Comey's daughter.

Maureen Comey was responsible for the "accidental" deletion of the CCTV tapes of Epstein's cell.

Below is the judge for the Maxwell trial.

Can you say "rigged?"


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[url=https://twitter.com/DarnelSugarfoo/status/1464853737315307523]11:08 PM · Nov 27, 2021·Twitter Web App




https://twitter.com/DarnelSugarfoo/statu...pot.com%2F

[Peter Lemkin]

This from the fairly conservative Times of Israel:

For writer who broke Epstein case, a rumored Mossad link is worth digging into
Reporter Julie K. Brown isn’t convinced the accused sex trafficker took his own life, and says associate Robert Maxwell may not have been the only one tied to Israeli intelligence
By JP O’ Malley 26 July 2021, 4:23 am [/url]

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[url=https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2019/07/AP19190725699911-1-e1562867752948.jpg]
Jeffrey Epstein, center, appears in court in West Palm Beach, Florida, July 30, 2008. (Uma Sanghvi/Palm Beach Post via AP)
Did the now-deceased, disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have links to the Israeli intelligence community? An investigative reporter for The Miami Herald claims that credible details making the link “are not far-fetched and need to be explored in further detail and examined.”
“It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Epstein had connections to the [Israeli intelligence community],” says Julie K. Brown, whose book “Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story” was released on July 20.
“Robert Maxwell certainly had those kinds of connections, and Epstein had a close relationship with Robert Maxwell,” the 59-year-old American journalist told The Times of Israel via Zoom call from her home in Hollywood, Florida.

Brown keenly stresses the striking similarities between Jeffrey Epstein’s death in August 2019 and Robert Maxwell’s death in November 1991. The 68-year-old British media mogul was said to have drowned after falling from his luxurious yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, near the Canary Islands. Spanish police insisted no foul play was suspected in Maxwell’s death, but rumors about how exactly Maxwell died have never gone away. One theory points to a possible suicide. Another claims Maxwell was assassinated by the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency, for which he was secretly working.
Maxwell is buried on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives. Many members of the Israeli intelligence community attended his funeral. So too did Yitzhak Shamir, Israel’s then-prime minister. Shamir eulogized the British tycoon for the political connections he brought to Israel during the 1980s, and for the money he invested in it.
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Two years ago, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, 66-year-old American financier Epstein was found hanging in his cell in a Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. Since then, numerous theories have swirled about Epstein’s true cause of death, making the leap from conspiracy fodder into the cultural mainstream.
Julie K. Brown, author of ‘Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story.’ (Eileen Soler)
According to Brown, “neither the FBI nor the United States Justice Department have convinced me that Jefferey Epstein committed suicide.”
“Why would Epstein give up before he even got to court?” Brown asks. She also points to a number of other murky details: Epstein breaking three bones in his neck before he died, and the fact that the two prison guards who were supposed to be keeping a watchful eye on Epstein in his Manhattan jail cell mysteriously fell asleep at the same time.
“It just defies common sense,” Brown says. “And why are [US] authorities not making the information they do know about Epstein’s death public?”
The Israel connection
One chapter in Brown’s latest book argues that the complex relationship Jeffery Epstein had with the Maxwell family may provide further answers. That history stretches back to the mid-1980s, when Epstein allegedly began helping Robert Maxwell hide money in numerous offshore bank accounts.
Maxwell, a self-made billionaire, was born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch, into a poor, Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish family in Czechoslovakia in 1923. Maxwell lost both his parents in the Holocaust, and later made his fortune in the book publishing and newspaper industries.
He went on to become a parliamentary representative for Britain’s Labour Party, but the final years of Maxwell’s life were plagued by financial trouble and earned him the nickname “the crook of the century.” Maxwell defaulted on $2 billion worth of loans and subsequently raided millions of pounds from his company’s retirement fund, even stealing from his own staff’s pensions and shares in Britain’s Mirror Group as he refused to face his inevitable bankruptcy.
An undated photo of British newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell, who was found dead in the sea off the Canary Islands in November 1991, following a reported fall from his yacht. (AP Photo)
Following Robert Maxwell’s death three decades ago, Epstein became an important figure to certain members of the Maxwell family, who were then left bankrupt and riddled with debt. Brown notes, for instance, that Epstein attended an event at New York’s Plaza Hotel on November 24, 1991, at which the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research paid tribute to Robert Maxwell.
The author also speculates that Epstein may have even offered financial assistance to Robert Maxwell’s wife Elizabeth when she became a widow. Epstein then became romantically involved with Elizabeth and Robert Maxwell’s ninth child, Ghislaine.
Known to be her father’s favorite child and his most trusted confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell may have been aware of many secrets her father took to the grave relating to his controversial political, financial, and espionage life, believes Brown.
The body of the late Robert Maxwell is interred at the Jerusalem Jewish Mount of Olives cemetery on November 10, 1991. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
A budding relationship
After her father’s death, Ghislaine Maxwell moved from London to New York — partially to escape all of the negative publicity surrounding it, but also to reinvent herself in the city’s buzzing celebrity social circle. This was a crucial component of Epstein and Maxwell’s complex relationship: She connected him to powerful figures who were then beyond his reach such as the Clintons, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew. In return, Epstein bankrolled her.
Brown believes Maxwell was in love with Epstein, but Epstein manipulated her to gratify a sexual obsession he had with underage women, which the journalist describes as “a sickness.”
“Epstein was a [sociopath] who felt he had enough power and money to be above the law,” says Brown. “And he believed he was brilliant enough to manipulate anyone to get what he wanted.”
“How much money Ghislaine Maxwell had when her father died has always been a mystery,” says Brown. “But Maxwell enjoyed the high life, and never had any real career or job, so Epstein supported her financially.
In this September 2, 2000, file photo, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, driven by Britain’s Prince Andrew leaves the wedding of a former girlfriend of the prince, Aurelia Cecil, at the Parish Church of St Michael in Compton Chamberlayne near Salisbury, England (Chris Ison/PA via AP, File)
Ghislaine Maxwell is currently charged in the United States with lying under oath and recruiting, grooming and trafficking girls to be sexually abused by Epstein from the 1990s through 2004. The 59-year-old outspoken British socialite has pleaded not guilty, and is presently being held in a New York prison awaiting trial, which is set to begin this coming November. If convicted, Maxwell could face up to 80 years in prison.
“So far, Maxwell is playing the same game with her defense [lawyers] as Epstein did: They are throwing every motion they can against these prosecutors to try to wear them down,” says Brown. “But it probably won’t work because the prosecutors that are handling [the case] this time around are much more dedicated and are not going to give up as easily.”
The best of the worst
Brown has a detailed understanding of how prosecutors can be corrupted in a high-profile case relating to sex trafficking accusations: Her newly-released book began as a three-part series of investigative articles she wrote for The Miami Herald in 2018. They exposed a secret plea deal arranged by Epstein’s lawyers, who undermined and manipulated the US criminal justice system so their client, Epstein, could get a softer prison sentence and ultimately escape federal prosecution.
Brown showed how back in 2007 Epstein was accused of assembling a cult-like network of underage girls — with the help of young female recruiters — to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, as often as three times a day.
Brown’s articles also noted how FBI and court records showed Epstein was suspected of trafficking minor girls, often from overseas, for sex parties at his other homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and the Caribbean.
This March 28, 2017 photo provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein. (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP, File)
“This dark and deep obsession that Epstein had [with underage women] was an addiction,” says Brown. “And the victims [I interviewed] told me that if they couldn’t bring him [another] girl, he would get angry at them. I imagine Epstein was doing the same thing with Ghislaine Maxwell, saying, ‘You’ve got to bring me more girls.'”
“One of the ironies of this case is that Maxwell seemed to have moved herself away from Epstein just when my series [of articles] came out,” says Brown. “But then the whole [story] resurrected itself in her life again.”
Based on a 53-page federal indictment, Epstein back in 2008 could have potentially ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life. Instead, the non-prosecution agreement Epstein’s lawyers secretly cut with federal prosecutors at the time shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes.
The deal required that Epstein plead guilty to two prostitution charges in a state court and agree to serve just 13 months in a county jail in Palm Beach, Florida. This essentially made the case that Epstein was only paying for sex, when he actually stood accused of sexually abusing minors.
“To see prosecutors, who are supposed to be advocating for victims, work so closely with Epstein’s lawyers to make this case go away was pretty surprising,” says Brown.
The journalist also exposed how Epstein’s enormous wealth and prestige afforded him extra privileges as he served his prison sentence in a Florida county jail. Brown’s book reveals how Epstein was allowed to visit his office in West Palm Beach for several hours every day. Additionally, during the hours he was inside the prison, Epstein was given access to a computer. On at least one occasion, one jail deputy saw Epstein masturbating while he watched one of his female assistants strip naked for him on Skype.
Toppling dominoes
It was not public knowledge that Epstein and four of his accomplices named in the secret plea agreement received immunity from all federal criminal charges until Brown’s explosive expose was published three years ago.
When the story broke, it led federal prosecutors in New York to open a fresh criminal investigation, which resulted in Epstein being subsequently arrested and charged in the summer of 2019. It also led to R. Alexander Acosta resigning as labor secretary in the Trump administration in July 2019. Crucially, Brown’s story explained how Acosta had helped cut the dodgy deal with Epstein’s legal team back in 2008, when he was a federal prosecutor in Miami.
‘Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story,’ by Julie K. Brown. (Courtesy)
“When [president] Donald Trump nominated Alex Acosta to be his labor secretary in early 2017, I immediately recognized Acosta’s name as being the prosecutor who was responsible for the [non-prosecution] deal,” Brown says. “And I just wondered, how do [Epstein’s] victims feel about this — because Acosta was responsible for the Labor Department, which supervises human trafficking and child labor laws.”
Brown notes that Epstein’s vast fortune (then estimated to be approximately $500 million) enabled him to hire a so-called legal dream team, which included lawyers such as Kenneth Starr and Alan Dershowitz, with the necessary skills, political connections and aggressive tactics to make sure he could get immunity.
“Dershowitz has his own political connections and knows a lot of different people in the US criminal justice system,” says Brown. “But he is going to be watching Maxwell’s [forthcoming] court case closely to see who she names, and what information she really has.”
Brown’s book also points to accusations by Virginia Giuffre that subsequently surfaced in connection to the Epstein case, which allegedly link Dershowitz’s name to Epstein’s sexual pyramid scheme.
Now in her mid-30s, Giuffre is an advocate for sex trafficking victims and claims Maxwell groomed her when she was still a teenager to be a sex slave for Maxwell, Epstein, Prince Andrew, and other prominent men — including Dershowitz.
Screen capture from video of Virginia Roberts Giuffre gesturing during an interview on the BBC Panorama program aired on December 2, 2019. (BBC Panorama via AP)
This story also recently surfaced in a Netflix documentary called “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich.” It has led Dershowitz to sue Netflix over what he claims are false allegations made against him in relation to these alleged crimes.
Other high-profile political figures named in Brown’s book accused of participating in Epstein’s international sex trafficking operation include allegations against Israel’s 10th prime minister, Ehud Barak.
Brown says all the accused have the right to be innocent until proven guilty, though she stresses that given the complex history of the Epstein case and the cover-ups it involved, these allegations need to be urgently investigated.
“The FBI, the [US] federal authorities, and law enforcement authorities in Europe should all be looking at the financial and social connections Epstein had with all of these people,” says Brown. “Epstein had a whole group of people helping him to [carry out these crimes].”
“[Epstein] did not do this alone,” she says. “There were plenty of people that either knew about what Epstein was doing, or even participated in what he was doing. This was an international sex trafficking organization that was similar to an organized crime family — so it shouldn’t just end just with the prosecution of [Ghislaine Maxwell].”

[Lauren Johnson]

We have to remember that the FBI raided every Epstein property and removed all the remaining video data. Presumably, none of that material will be viewed in this trial or any other unless it serves an agenda other than Maxell's guilt or innocence. If this were a real investigation, Maxwell would be given a plea deal in exchange leading to a wide range of prosecutions. Not gonna happen.

[Peter Lemkin]

Ghislaine Maxwell was grilled about whether multimillionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein ever worked with the CIA or the FBI — and if he had any connections to the Israeli government — in a 2016 deposition that was unsealed Thursday morning.
Maxwell said she had no information about Epstein’s alleged connections to intelligence agencies when responding to the questions from an attorney for accuser Virginia Giuffre.
Giuffre’s attorney, Sigrid McCawley, raised the question after she asked a series of questions about Epstein, Maxwell and her lawyer leaking criminal allegations against Giuffre to the press.
“Did Jeffrey Epstein assist in obtaining information about criminal allegations relating to Virginia Roberts?” McCawley asked.
“I have no recollection,” Maxwell responded.
“Do you know if Jeffrey Epstein had any relationship with the U.S. government either working for the CIA or the FBI in his lifetime?” McCawley asked a short time later.
“I have no knowledge of that,” Maxwell said.
“Do you know if Jeffrey Epstein has any friends that are in the CIA or FBI?” she was asked again.
“I have no idea,” she responded.
“Are you aware that Jeffrey Epstein has told people that he worked for the government to recover stolen funds?” McCawley continued.
“I don’t recall conversations about that,” Maxwell responded.
see also

[/url] Ghislaine Maxwell plays prude when grilled on 'basket of sex toys'
[url=https://nypost.com/2020/10/22/ghislaine-maxwell-plays-prude-when-grilled-on-basket-of-sex-toys/]
McCawley then asked if she knew of any ties Epstein had to the Israeli government.
“Does Jeffrey Epstein have any affiliation with the Israeli government?” she asked, which Maxwell said she had no recollection of.
The exchange is included in a more than 400-page deposition in a defamation case brought by Giuffre against Maxwell.
The document has been sealed for years, but was ordered released by a Manhattan federal judge and made public Thursday morning.

[Peter Lemkin]

I agree with Lauren that the real truth is not likely to come out, but some may...we really don't know how good the prosecuting attorneys are or how close to death they care to come for themselves and their clients to get to the bottom truth beyond the fact that their clients were abused sexually underage. Maxwell seemed to be able to 'handle' the very very mysterious death of her father, so the equally mysterious and very very suspicious death of her partner will be 'old hat'. However, since she knows where a lot of bodies are buried and compromat on a lot of powerful people, they can't put her away for long - or she'd spill the beans. They either have to secretly make a deal with her or terminate her life too. It is all out of spy novel, but real life. The sex stuff is really not the point of either of their lives...that was just how they entertained their leisure hours along with the rich, famous and royalty.
While I agree that Maxwell will not have the compromat tapes to use as leverage, she still knows a lot in her head to get very powerful people in trouble - without the tapes. Both of them were too important to have been working for the FBI - although the FBI will do cleanup work for any 'friendly' intelligence agency more powerful than they. I think they both surely worked for the Israeli's, possibly also British intel [MI5/6] and CIA or some other US high-level intelligence agency - possibly others. I think they also freelanced in blackmail. Hey, when one has secret videotaping equiptment with permission of one or more intelligence agencies, why not use the same tapes to get oneself a few more hundreds of millions of dollars every month or so......

I give a 0% chance that Epstein hung himself in jail. Not possible, but the MMM and the public generally seem to buy it. Ah, propaganda......

[Peter Lemkin]

Ghislaine Maxwell testimony: 465 pages of fury, denials, glimpses into Jeffrey Epstein’s life
Kevin G. Hall and Ben Wieder
Miami Herald


Oct 23, 2020
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No, said Ghislaine Maxwell, she didn’t remember where she met Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the woman who says she was recruited from a job at Mar-a-Lago as a teenager to become a Jeffrey Epstein masseuse and eventually a “sex slave.”
Yes, she recalled women hanging around Epstein’s pool topless, but it was not that common and they didn’t appear underage, she swore.
No, despite claims to the contrary, she said she didn’t participate in orgies with Epstein and young girls, including a specific allegation that involved a 13-year-old.
The back and forth comes from a 465-transcript released early Thursday of a deposition from 2016 given by Maxwell, the former partner and alleged recruiter for Epstein, who was arrested this past summer on sex-related charges. It shows how deeply intertwined she was in what authorities labeled the sexual trafficking of minors.
Maxwell gave the deposition in a defamation lawsuit settled in 2017 brought against her by Epstein accuser Giuffre. Much of the court record remained hidden from public view until the Miami Herald first sued in April 2018 for dozens of documents in the case to be unsealed.
An earlier batch of filings was released last summer. While Giuffre supported release of the transcript in July, Maxwell’s lawyers had put up obstacle after obstacle to block its release.
That ended Thursday, after days of wrangling over redactions, when the transcript of Maxwell’s deposition became public. Two more depositions from unnamed people referred to as Doe 1 and Doe 2 are expected to be released within the next month.
The testimony released Thursday showed the degree to which Maxwell was obstructive in her sworn testimony about her relationship with Epstein, although the detailed questioning by Giuffre’s lawyers outlined her intimate knowledge of his empire.
When asked if she had ever seen a girl under the age of 18 in Epstein’s home who wasn’t the child of a friend, Maxwell denied any knowledge.
“Again, I can’t testify to that because I have no idea what you are talking about,” Maxwell said.
Maxwell later claimed that she wasn’t aware of all that happened in Epstein’s home, even when she was there.
“I had an office with a door so the door would be shut and I would be working. I’m not responsible for what Jeffrey does and I don’t always pay attention to what happens in the house,” she said.
A second deposition Maxwell gave in July 2016, one that has not yet been unsealed, is more revelatory because Maxwell was forced to give answers, said David Boies, the prominent attorney representing Giuffre.
“What you see and what was released is only the beginning of revelations about the scope and scale of the Epstein/Maxwell trafficking ring. We are finally seeing how it operated, a bit of who was involved beyond what is publicly known,” Boies said. “This is only a small part of the evidence that was accumulated during our civil case.”
Time and time again in the April 2016 deposition, Maxwell avoided answering direct questions about her knowledge of Epstein’s alleged sexual abuse of girls. In fact, she uttered the phrase “I don’t recall” 66 times in the lengthy deposition and 42 times said “I don’t recollect.”
After showing her a copy of a police report with allegations from 30 girls that Epstein had sexually abused them, Giuffre’s lawyers asked Maxwell 20 times whether she believed Epstein “sexually abused minors” or “interacted sexually with minors.” Maxwell refused to give a direct answer, instead repeatedly maintaining that Giuffre’s accusations about her and Epstein had been lies.
The repeated questioning so rankled Maxwell’s lawyer, Jeffrey Pagliuca, that he at one point shouted, “Ask your next question. Don’t keep asking the same question.”
At a later point in the questioning, Maxwell herself was so frustrated by repeated questions about her knowledge of Epstein’s sexual abuse that she pounded a table in frustration.
Maxwell’s refusal to answer questions about Epstein’s alleged abuse includes her denial that she was aware of the stash of sex toys Epstein allegedly used on himself and victims during his abuse.
“No. I need you to define a sex toy, I don’t have enough knowledge of sex toys,” Maxwell responded to a question on the subject.
Many of the names of alleged victims, perpetrators and other third parties in the documents remain redacted. Those whose identities are obscured by the redactions are being given the opportunity to object to their names being released and the court will consider whether to release the names of those who have not objected at a later, unspecified time.
Despite that, the names of two girls who were allegedly abused by Epstein were included in the deposition.
Former President Bill Clinton’s name appeared four times in the transcript, but seemed referenced elsewhere in areas where names were redacted.
Maxwell denied she was on Epstein’s private island Little St. James with Clinton, but acknowledged that she flew with the former president on Epstein’s plane. She balked at the suggestion that Epstein and Clinton were friends.
“I wouldn’t be able to characterize it like that, no,” she said.
Giuffre has not accused Clinton of having sex with her or other girls allegedly abused by Epstein. He appears at least 27 times in flight logs for Epstein’s two aircraft.
Another of the documents unsealed Thursday appeared to suggest that Giuffre’s team had sought to depose Clinton himself. The deposition apparently did not happen. Maxwell’s team opposed the effort, saying it was part of a “calculated media strategy” by Giuffre and her lawyers.
President Donald Trump, who was friends with Epstein and said of Maxwell, “I just wish her well,” when asked about her after her arrest, doesn’t appear to be referenced in the deposition. However, Maxwell is asked about Trump’s Palm Beach club Mar-a-Lago, where she reportedly met and recruited Giuffre, who was working as a spa attendant at the time. Maxwell said she wasn’t a member of Mar-a-Lago, but that she had visited. The Herald has previously reported that Epstein was a member of the club until he was kicked out for hitting on the teenage daughter of another member.
In some cases, the identity of the person whose name was redacted is obvious from the context.
For example, Maxwell appeared to be asked about Epstein’s relationship with billionaire former Victoria’s Secret owner Les Wexner, for whom Epstein served as a financial adviser and who was the source of a significant amount of Epstein’s wealth.
Maxwell said she didn’t know of any relationship between Epstein and Wexner beyond their business relationship and had no knowledge of the circumstances under which Epstein gained possession of Wexner’s Upper East Side mansion.
“I know nothing about that transaction,” Maxwell said.
Similarly, she appeared to be asked several times about Giuffre’s relationship with Prince Andrew, who Giuffre has said she was directed to have sex with. When asked about the infamous picture of Maxwell, Giuffre and Prince Andrew together, with the prince’s arm around Giuffre’s bare midriff, Maxwell denied knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the photo, which Giuffre said was taken by Epstein at Maxwell’s London home.
“I have no idea [where] this picture was taken. I know what she purports it to be but I’m not going to say that I do,” Maxwell said.
Maxwell also disputed Giuffre’s claim that the then-teen had sex with Prince Andrew at Maxwell’s home.
“What I’m representing is that her entire ludicrous and absurd story of what took place in my house is an obvious lie,” said Maxwell, who, despite her protestations settled the legal dispute with Giuffre in 2017.
The transcript also called into question Maxwell’s assertion that she had little to do with Epstein after his release from a Florida jail in 2009 and was in conflict with her later assertion that Epstein paid her legal bills at the time of the civil case.
That’s important because in the U.S. Virgin Islands Maxwell is suing the Epstein estate, valued at more than $600 million. She has argued the estate must cover her legal bills because she was an employee who had a verbal agreement with Epstein and that he kept his word about paying her legal bills until his death in August 2019 in a Manhattan jail.
In the deposition, she insisted he was not paying her legal bills. She also appeared to contradict what is now common knowledge: that Epstein did work for her father, Robert Maxwell, a high-profile publishing baron who died under mysterious circumstances in 1991. After his death at sea, apparently falling off his yacht called the Lady Ghislaine, it was discovered he had pilfered his company’s pension fund.
She and Epstein met the same year and she began working for Epstein in 1992, according to the deposition, and continued to work for him through 2009. They maintained occasional contact after that, according to the deposition, particularly on looming legal matters and Epstein contributed $50,000 to Maxwell’s environmental organization Terra Mar.
When asked if she was ever Epstein’s girlfriend, Maxwell replied that it was a “tricky question.”
“There were times when I would have liked to think of myself as his girlfriend,” she said.
Maxwell said Epstein paid her between $100,000 and $200,000 a year for her work for him and made her loans for various purchases, including a townhouse, and bought her a car. She said that at the time of the deposition she didn’t have any outstanding loans with Epstein. She also said she was “couch surfing” at the time, without a home in the United States.
She said that she interviewed employees of all sorts for Epstein’s operations across the globe, but when presented with the names of various Epstein companies, including one called the Ghislaine Maxwell company, she denied having any specific knowledge. Later, Maxwell, who had worked for Epstein for 17 years, said she didn’t know how he made money.
Under grilling, Maxwell acknowledged that not only did she have U.S. and British citizenship, but was also a citizen of France. That’s important since France does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.
The lengthy deposition covered a lot of territory, including the longstanding rumors of Epstein’s ties to the CIA and Israeli intelligence.
“I have no knowledge of that,” Maxwell said in response to a question about any CIA or FBI ties.
In fact, FBI documents now public show that Epstein became an informant as part of his controversial plea deal in 2008. That relationship is the subject of a current federal public records lawsuit brought by Angela Clemente, a self-styled muckraker.
Maxwell said she maintained contact with Epstein after his 2008 guilty plea and that he paid her an unspecified amount in 2009 after his guilty plea.
“I’m a very loyal person and Jeffrey was very good to me when my father passed away and I believe that you need to be a good friend in people’s hour of need,” she said.
Lawyers for Giuffre used the deposition to show what they suggested was collusion by Epstein and Maxwell to get their stories straight as Giuffre’s allegations began to get global media attention. The one-time Epstein muse countered she just wanted to be accurate.
“I was not coordinating with Jeffrey. He had details that I did not have. I was not party to his case,” she insisted. “I needed to have information in order to be able to respond so I was not coordinating with him. I was merely asking for details that I could have.”
Maxwell was arrested this past July 2 at a 156-acre estate in New Hampshire and charged with four counts of sexual trafficking of a minor and two counts of perjury, related to statements she made in the April 2016 deposition.
The sexual trafficking charges covered her alleged recruiting and grooming of three girls for Epstein to sexually abuse between 1994 and 1997. Maxwell is alleged to have partaken in the abuse of one of the girls. An extraordinarily lenient deal with federal prosecutors in 2008, spotlighted in the Herald’s “Perversion of Justice” series in November 2018, allowed Epstein to escape similar charges.
“Maxwell’s presence as an adult woman helped put the victims at ease as Maxwell and Epstein intended,” said Audrey Strauss, the acting U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, in announcing the charges against Maxwell in July.
Several of Maxwell’s statements in the transcript were the basis for the perjury charges in the criminal charges, including that she was not aware of Epstein’s scheme to recruit underage girls for sexual massages, had not interacted with any girls under the age of 18 at Epstein’s properties aside from Giuffre, had no knowledge of Epstein’s sex toys or of his sexual partners aside from herself and two other women with whom she and Epstein had sex together.
A first batch of documents in the Giuffre-Epstein lawsuit was unsealed on Aug. 9, 2019, a month after Epstein was arrested on new federal charges of sex crimes, and a day before his death by suicide.
The unsealed documents in 2019 detailed Maxwell’s alleged role in finding girls to satisfy Epstein’s insatiable sexual appetite. It also alleged that Giuffre, who was about 17 when Maxwell allegedly recruited her to have sex with Epstein, had been directed to have relations with a host of Maxwell and Epstein’s prominent friends. These included former Maine Sen. George Mitchell, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, French modeling scout Jean-Luc Brunel, American hotel magnate Tom Pritzker and New York hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin.
Giuffre had previously said that she had also been directed to have sex with Prince Andrew, which appears to be the subject in a section of the transcript in which there is discussion about alleged events in the bathtub of Maxwell’s home in London.
The Epstein accuser also said she was told to have sex with prominent American attorney Alan Dershowitz. All the men have denied Giuffre’s claims, and Giuffre and Dershowitz have sued each other for defamation.
After Epstein was found dead in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Maxwell largely disappeared from public view. She was photographed at a Los Angeles In-N-Out Burger restaurant, an unusual locale for a British socialite, weeks after Epstein’s death. Otherwise her whereabouts were largely unknown.
The New Hampshire house where Maxwell was arrested was purchased through a shell company in December 2019 and Maxwell kept her name off of the purchasing documents, according to someone familiar with the details of the sale. She toured the house under a pseudonym.
It all added weight to an argument by lawyers for the Herald that Maxwell’s April 2016 deposition was a judicial document in a settled case and that there was a public interest in releasing it. U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled in July 2020 in favor of the Herald, ordering that the deposition and several related documents in the Giuffre-Maxwell lawsuit be made public.
Maxwell appealed that and on Monday the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled against her. That set in motion another round of court filings where Maxwell’s attorneys sought further delay and argued for blacking out more names and descriptions. Two unidentified people who provided testimony in the civil suit this week were given another 14 days to persuade Preska to redact their names and some information.
The deposition also factors into Maxwell’s ongoing criminal case, scheduled for a July trial. Her lawyers have argued that the deposition had been released illegally to federal prosecutors, a charge the prosecutors dispute. The deposition release, her lawyers said, would jeopardize chances of a fair trial in the criminal case.
First Published October 23, 2020, 4:10am

[Lauren Johnson]

Here's a really good YouTube blow by blow summary of the trial day by day by a criminal attorney.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQa62ky...UqyvRCbDNQ

[Lauren Johnson]

It's worth watching this video again to remind ourselves of the larger context of this trial.  If we start hearing Les Wexner's name being brought up and if she gets a lighter sentence to testify against him, then maybe this more than some kind of show trial.  But considering that vast networked of compromised power people and that Israel would have to be at the center of any prosecution  --  no way.

[Lauren Johnson]

The Maxwell trial appears to be a joke.  The DOJ has put up an intentionally weak case.  Here is a wide ranging interview around the trial and many other topics.