{"id":43350,"date":"2018-12-04T17:28:26","date_gmt":"2018-12-04T22:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=43350"},"modified":"2018-12-04T17:28:26","modified_gmt":"2018-12-04T22:28:26","slug":"why-isnt-jeffrey-epstein-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2018\/12\/04\/why-isnt-jeffrey-epstein-in-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Why isn’t Jeffrey Epstein in prison?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The Miami Herald\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0investigative team, led by Julie K. Brown, is doing some remarkable reporting on \u201cHow a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the very disturbing story of Jeffrey Epstein, the gazillionaire hedge-fund rent-skimmer who used his fortune to indulge his life-long passion for sex with underage girls. Epstein did this for years, creating an abuse-and-recruiting system that provided him with a steady stream of victims who number in the dozens. He is a sexual predator of the same vile caliber as Larry Nassar or Jerry Sandusky.<\/p>\n

But while Nassar and Sandusky will spend the rest of their lives in prison, Epstein served only a 13-month sentence, throughout which he enjoyed lenient work-release privileges. The FBI investigation into the likelihood that Epstein\u2019s crimes included countless more victims, as well as trafficking children from overseas, was abruptly ended, his victims were not invited to testify at his sentencing, and extraordinary measures were taken to keep the details of his crimes from being known by the public.<\/p>\n

A deal was struck \u2014 an extraordinary plea agreement that\u00a0would conceal the full extent of Epstein\u2019s crimes and the number of people involved.<\/p>\n

Not only would Epstein serve just 13 months in the county jail, but the deal \u2014 called a non-prosecution agreement\u00a0\u2014 essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein\u2019s sex crimes, according to a Miami Herald examination of\u00a0thousands of emails, court documents and FBI records.<\/p>\n

The pact required Epstein to plead guilty to two prostitution charges in state court. Epstein and four of his accomplices named in the agreement received immunity from all federal criminal charges. But even more unusual, the deal included wording that granted immunity to \u201cany potential co-conspirators\u2019\u2019 who were also involved in Epstein\u2019s crimes. These accomplices or participants were not identified in the agreement, leaving it open to interpretation whether it possibly referred to other influential people who were having sex with underage girls at Epstein\u2019s various homes or on his plane.<\/p>\n

As part of the arrangement, Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that\u00a0the deal would be kept from the victims. As a result, the non-prosecution agreement was sealed until after it was approved by the judge, thereby averting any chance that the girls \u2014 or anyone else \u2014 might show up in court and try to derail it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Brown\u2019s report, as the headline says, tells how<\/em> this happened, but the explanation of why<\/em> this happened remains uncertain.<\/p>\n

The how<\/em> involves Alexander Acosta, the U.S. Attorney appointed by George W. Bush<\/a>\u00a0for the southern district of Florida. He\u2019s the guy who cut this weird sweetheart deal for Jeffrey Epstein. Or, rather, he\u2019s the guy who allowed Epstein\u2019s team of top-dollar attorneys to write the most extraordinarily lenient deal imaginable, and who then signed on the dotted line, giving them and their client everything they asked for and more.<\/p>\n

This was a very odd thing for a politically ambitious prosecutor to do. Epstein was just the kind of monstrous and utterly unsympathetic predator that politically ambitious prosecutors love to \u201cthrow the book at.\u201d Acosta had mountains of evidence assembled by police and FBI investigators, and their investigation was still going \u2014 pointing toward even more evidence of even larger crimes. It was just the sort of thing that a grandstanding U.S. Attorney could turn into a winning campaign for governor or senator.<\/p>\n

But that didn\u2019t happen. Instead, Acosta abruptly agreed to shut down the ongoing investigations, to hush up any publicity surrounding the case, and to ensure that Epstein served less time and lighter time than someone might get for a first-time marijuana offense.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

Well, one answer might be money. Epstein has loads of it. He\u2019s used his fortune to make powerful political allies, and to hire that legal dream team \u2014 one which includes cable news favorite Alan Dershowitz and the infamous Kenneth Starr (a man oxymoronically notorious for being both a stern prude and<\/em> a rape apologist). Epstein\u2019s incalculable wealth is certainly vast enough that his sweetheart deal might just be a matter of garden-variety corruption \u2014 of bought-and-paid-for political favors and the second set of rules that dark money donations buy for the overclass.<\/p>\n

But this looks to be even worse than that. Part of the investigation that Acosta\u2019s bargain ended was looking into the possibility that some of Epstein\u2019s overclass \u201cfriends\u201d participated in his sexual use and abuse of underage girls. And that raises the suspicion that this was the reason<\/em> for such an unusual deal.<\/p>\n

Epstein is a grotesquely wealthy man who, like most such wealthy men, spent a fortune seeking to buy political influence in the hopes of keeping his wealth and collecting even more of it. For years, he\u2019s spent a great deal of money trying to curry favor with all manner of politicians, lobbyists, and his fellow billionaires. In another article in this series<\/a>, Brown writes:<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Epstein had a little black book filled with the names and personal phone numbers of some of the world\u2019s wealthiest and most influential people, from Bill Clinton and Donald Trump to actors, actresses, scientists and business tycoons.<\/p>\n

A money manager for the super-rich, Epstein had two private jets, the largest single residence in Manhattan, an island in the Caribbean, a ranch in New Mexico and a waterfront estate in Florida.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Most of the people named in Epstein\u2019s address book probably enjoyed his lavish entertaining and hospitality without ever knowing about his life as a sexual criminal. But some probably knew, or suspected, and said nothing. Others, investigators believed, knew and participated.<\/p>\n

Might some of those \u201cfriends\u201d have leaned on Acosta to produce Epstein\u2019s sweetheart deal? We don\u2019t know. If it was done as a cover-up for any of those friends, then the cover-up was a successful one. But any such \u201cfriends\u201d and co-conspirators with Epstein would certainly have had every incentive to persuade Acosta to make exactly this kind of sweep-it-under-the-rug arrangement \u2014 whether because they sought to cover their own misdeeds or because Epstein thus had the goods on them and would easily have been able to blackmail them into intervening on his behalf. But we don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

We do know that Alexander Acosta took care of the Jeffrey Epstein situation and that a few years later one of Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s friends awarded him a huge, surprising promotion to the cabinet-level post of secretary of labor. That walks like and quacks like a quid pro quo.<\/p>\n

The question in the title of this post is a phrase sometimes used to assert an opinion. \u201cWhy isn\u2019t so-and-so in prison?\u201d we ask, meaning by that, \u201cI think so-and-so deserves to be in prison.\u201d But that question isn\u2019t merely opinion here. Jeffrey Epstein was found guilty of crimes that the law and courts have almost always found ought to result in prison. His crimes merit that. The facts of his case mean that he should still be in prison \u2014 real<\/em> prison, not the cozy work-release in a luxury office, attended by his own hired security \u201cprison\u201d in which he briefly served time.<\/p>\n

So the question in the title of this post is a genuine question. And it is a question with a specific answer. We do not yet know that answer, but it exists. There is a reason that Jeffrey Epstein is not in prison, as he should be. There is a reason that Alexander Acosta bent over backwards to go easy on Epstein, to end the criminal investigation, and to keep his scandal out of the public eye.<\/p>\n

We need to know those reasons. We need to know the answer to this question.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Larry Nassar and Jerry Sandusky will spend the rest of their lives in prison. Jeffrey Epstein committed similar crimes, but he received extraordinary leniency instead of a life sentence. We need to know why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[240,36],"class_list":["post-43350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-trump","tag-work"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy isn't Jeffrey Epstein in prison?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Larry Nassar and Jerry Sandusky will spend the rest of their lives in prison. Jeffrey Epstein committed similar crimes, but he received extraordinary leniency instead of a life sentence. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Why isn't Jeffrey Epstein in prison?","description":"Larry Nassar and Jerry Sandusky will spend the rest of their lives in prison. Jeffrey Epstein committed similar crimes, but he received extraordinary leniency instead of a life sentence. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}