Rov_Scam's profile

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

"In theory" is doing a lot of work here, as is "may not always be true". In theory, the men commenting on that article would be flattered if a flamboyantly gay man publicly whistled and pointed out what a great ass they have. In practice, I'm routinely bombarded with images created by people trying to get me to give them my money, and I don't think the purveyors of these believe that I actually enjoy looking at them. Especially when they're advertising a good or service I couldn't make use of even if I wanted to. This is some all-star hairsplitting.

2

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

The New York Post ran an article about this a couple days ago, and the comments were variations on the following themes:

You can't compliment women anymore!
This intrudes on free speech
This law probably doesn't apply to immigrants
They were wearing enticing clothes; this is entrapment
The women were too unattractive to deserve catcalls
The police need to focus on actual crimes, like grooming gangs, not this penny ante bullshit
This is Sharia law
This is a dumb idea that Democrats probably like

I'll admit to admit that it's a bit unfair to judge conservatives as a whole based on the New York Post comment section, or any online comment section for that matter, but I don't think I'm going out on too much of a limb to suggest that conservatives in general think that busting people for catcalling, or even viewing it as a police issue, is stupid. The culture war angle here is that if you replace "catcalling" with "panhandling" the polarity reverses instantly. I have no doubt, based on prior stories the Post has run on panhandling, that if they ran a story about how some American city did a similar crackdown on begging we'd be hearing about how it was about time that a mayor grew some balls and cracked down, and that all those people should be locked up in mental institutions or forced to get real jobs.

In essence, though, whether we're talking about catcalling, or panhandling, or various other things associated with homelessness, what we're really talking about is obnoxious behavior that occurs in public, and the right to be obnoxious in public.

5

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

Great question. Yes, the existence of a recall, while not a tacit admission of guilt, can be used as evidence that a product is defective. But part of taking prudent legal action is knowing when you're beat. On the one side you have a victim, possibly a law enforcement officer, who is seriously injured or worse because a gun went off when it shouldn't have. On the other side you have a company with millions of dollars in military and police contracts insisting that the product is perfectly safe even though the exact same thing has happened several times before and the plaintiff has an expert who can describe the defect and explain to the jury exactly how the accident occurred. Make that argument to the right jury and a 5 million dollar wrongful death verdict balloons into 50 million in punitive damages. If the company hasn't figured it out yet, the jury will help them, and they will keep helping them until they either fix the problem or go out of business.

Do a recall now and it will cost a bundle, but a certain percentage of people will take advantage of the recall (especially considering that a large number of guns are owned by institutional customers), preventing some suits from being filed, and accidents that do result in suits net them some advantages. First, punitive damages are much less of a risk since they took affirmative steps to mitigate the problem. Second, it may reduce the liability if the company can prove that the user was on notice that the product was dangerous and should be modified or discarded, and neglected to take advantage of the recall program, based on a theory of comparative negligence or voluntary assumption of the risk. The downside is that it would cost a hell of a lot of money, but they could theoretically have to do it anyway. If a police department bought a bunch of these and was apprehensive about using them, they could try to sue on a theory of breach of implied warranty. This wouldn't be an easy case, though.

13

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

I don't know that the new charges necessarily obviate the idea that the gun is unsafe. I don't know that the facts have been revealed in enough specificity to have a complete picture, but let's suppose the following happened: The guy threw his holstered gun down on the desk, and contact with the surface caused it to discharge, killing the other guy. The first guy then lied about what happened to investigators, claiming the gun was just sitting on the desk when it went off. Federal law defines involuntary manslaughter as "[T]he commission...without due caution and circumspection, of a lawful act which might produce death".

I don't think it's unreasonable to argue that the careless handling of a loaded firearm in the manner described above qualifies as a lawful act which might produce death performed in an incautious manner. But it's also true that a firearm so handled shouldn't go off accidentally. I would suspect that there will be a civil suit stemming from this, and Sig got lucky that it happened in Wyoming, where juries are stingy, giving the case a decent chance at settlement. But now they're on notice like they've never been before, and unless they recall the gun outright or come up with a fix, no matter how clunky, that absolutely prevents that from happening, they run the risk of having to explain to a Philadelphia jury why that was just too expensive and said jury deciding that trebling that amount is a just way of calculating punitive damages. It's still a tough spot to be in.

12

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

Yes, the Oklahoma legislature spends a ton of money on jobs programs for leftists and progressive indoctrination.

1

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

So these are some curious results, and mirror the issues I was having with the models I tried. For Grim Reaper of Love, it does correctly not that 45Cat lists a May 1966 release date (which every model was able to do), and also correctly notes the May 28 Billboard review, which it was the only model to actually find, since most of the others just defaulted to the first date charted. The curious issue is with the ARSA data. It did indeed appear on the WLS June 10 chart. However, this was not the earliest chart it appeared on. That would be the May 9 KBLA chart, and the prior Monday would be May 2. The even more curious thing about it is that the single appeared in 35 charts documented by ARSA prior to the June 10 WLS chart, so I don't know why it would have picked that one. This is, I guess, somewhat of an improvement; the only other model I tried that even claimed to use ARSA data was Grok, and it simply made up entries that didn't exist! The most interesting thing about this, though, is that it didn't actually follow the instructions. Maybe I could have been a little more clear, but the instructions said:

If ARSA and Billboard data are both available, use the earlier date

Maybe I should have specified that I wanted the earliest date, which would have been the date of the May 28 review, making the correct date based on the data the model actually used to be May 23, 1966. Then again, I thought I specified early that the month of release given by 45Cat and RYM should take priority, so even if this wasn't clear, it should have preferred the May date. In any event, it didn't get the correct ARSA date, so this counts as a fail.

Moving on to Feel the Heat, US Copyright data gives a publication date of June 16, 1980. Maybe this was the search engine it was trying to use, but it nonetheless didn't use it. I give it props for using Cash Box, which I don't even use that much because the available data is fragmentary and not easily searchable (or at least it was when I started doing this a decade ago), and it does point to the correct issue. However, it runs into the same problem of following instructions when it was told to use the date preceding publication but inexplicably picks a date after the date of the issue. Honestly, there must be something up with the pro model, because the free ones I tried didn't seem to have any problem following instructions, and at least gave plausible dates based on the information they had. Here I get two dates that are not only incorrect, but don't actually follow the rule. I had high hopes for this but at this point I can only consider it a failure. If you're interested in running this further, I can try to make the rules a little more explicit and find some other releases to test how it can do different things, but suffice it to say my opinions of AI capabilities haven't appreciably improved.

4

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

@self_made_human, it's been a couple of weeks since we had that AI discussion and you agreed to run a couple trials for me. I apologize for not getting to it sooner, but I had some big idea that I was going to find representative examples for each category and see how well it did, and update the algorithm to be more precise with regard to how I actually do it manually, but I of course didn't have the time to spend and it fell by the wayside. So I'll just throw out two releases to get you started for now, for which the suboptimal algorithm is irrelevant:

The Turtles - Grim Reaper of Love
Henry Paul Band - Feel the Heat

I'll try to post some more that present different challenges to see how the model handles them, but these two highlight something that the free models of ChatGTP seemed to struggle with.

To make things easier, these are both American releases. So you don't have to look back, here are the instructions:

For major label albums released circa 1991 or later, an official street date should be available. This gets first priority. If a release date is provided by a reputable source such as RateYourMusic, Wikipedia, or 45Cat, use that date, giving 45Cat priority. If a reputable source only provides a month of release, use that as a guideline for further research, subject to change if the weight of the evidence suggests that this is incorrect. If any other source purports a specific release date, use that date, provided it does not conflict with information provided in reputable sources. Other sources include other websites, Google search results, and message board comments. For US releases from 1978 to the present, use the date of publication from the US Copyright Office website if available. For US releases from 1972 to 1978, use the date of publication from the US Copyright physical indexes, images of which are available on archive.org, if available. For releases prior to 1972 or are otherwise unavailable from the above sources, determine the "usual day of release" of the record label, that being the day of the week that the majority of the issues with known release dates were released. Be aware that this can change over time. If no information is available regarding the usual day of release, default to Monday. If ARSA chart data for the release is available, assign the release date to the usual day of release immediately prior to the date of the chart. (ARSA is a website that compiles local charts from individual radio stations). If ARSA chart data is unavailable, assign the release date to the usual day of release the week prior to the date when the release was reviewed by Billboard, first appeared in a chart, or was advertised in Billboard. If ARSA and Billboard data are both available, use the earlier date (ARSA will almost always be earlier unless there was a substantial delay between release and initial charting). If neither ARSA nor Billboard data is available, use a similar system with any other trade publication. If no trade publication or chart data is available, determine the order of release based on catalog number. Assume that the items are released sequentially and are evenly spaced. Use known release dates (or release months) to calculate a reasonable date of release based on available information, including year of release (if known), month of release (if known) and usual day of release. If none of the above can be determined, make a reasonable estimate based on known information.

The following caveats also apply:

For non-US releases, domestic releases often trailed their foreign counterparts by several months. Any data derived from US sources must take this into account when determining if the proposed estimate is reasonable.

If the date of recording is known, any estimated release date must take into consideration a reasonable amount of time between recording and release based on what was typical of the era. For independent releases, dates of release from Bandcamp may be used provided they don't conflict with known information (i.e. sometimes Bandcamp release dates will use the date of upload, or the date of a CD reissue).

4

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

I'll play, but only on the condition that we gat at least ten people, including the following:

The guy who drafts Patrick Mahomes way too early
The guy who loads up on tight ends
The guy who drafts big names from five years ago way too early, and acts like he can't believe they're still on the board
The guy who drafts the Ravens defense in the 9th round
The guy who drafts the consensus best kicker in the 10th round (used to be Janikowski, more recently Justin Tucker, who knows this year)
The guy who drafts an inordinate number of Steelers (or whoever the hometown team is)
The guy who drafts someone who will be bagging groceries two years from now because he had a 79 yard run in the preseason
The guy who takes fantasy football way too seriously but nonetheless ends up drafting an awful team
The guy who fucks up his entire draft because he thinks it's a PPR league when it isn't, or vice versa

This last one happened in a league I played in a few years back and the results were hilarious. He had drafted a bunch of wideouts and practically no RBs and didn't realize we were in a standard league until the 7th or 8th round. He then started frantically drafting every questionable RB available to make up lost ground, and was offering desperate trades the week afterwards to correct his error. He ended up almost making the playoffs, but the full-blown meltdown was unforgettable.

9

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

I'm not sure what your point is. The original argument was that it was harder to get a CCL in purple states like PA than it was to get a driver's license. My argument was that it's significantly easier, even in liberal areas like Pittsburgh. I don't know what pointing to the discretion of a sheriff in one of the most conservative areas of the state is supposed to prove.

-2

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

In PA the sheriff is allowed to ask for references, and it's on the standard form, but not allowed to contact them. I can't speak of other counties, but in Allegheny County the (Democratic) sheriff doesn't require them and the form they distribute has the fields pre-filled as "Not required".

0

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

I live in PA, and getting a CCL here is trivially easy, even in deep blue areas. The only minor impediment is that in some counties you have to submit the application in person, while others allow mail or online submissions, and in all counties you have to pick up the permit in person. Compare this to getting a DL, which requires a physical exam, written exam and eye test at the licensing center, ID plus Social Security Card plus two proofs of address, and then a road test to cap it all off. The procedural hurdles for driving are significantly higher.

0

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

You need a carry permit to transport a gun in a car, at least in most places I'm aware of, unless the gun is unloaded and cases in the trunk or some other inaccessible area.

2

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

(5) LEWD OR LASCIVIOUS MOLESTATION.--

(a) A person who intentionally touches in a lewd or lascivious manner the breasts, genitals, genital area, or buttocks, or the clothing covering them, of a person less than 16 years of age, or forces or entices a person under 16 years of age to so touch the perpetrator, commits lewd or lascivious molestation.

An offender 18 years of age or older who commits lewd or lascivious molestation against a victim 12 years of age or older but less than 16 years of age commits a felony of the second degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084

See also

(7) LEWD OR LASCIVIOUS EXHIBITION.--

(a) A person who:

Intentionally masturbates;

Intentionally exposes the genitals in a lewd or lascivious manner; or

Intentionally commits any other sexual act that does not involve actual physical or sexual contact with the victim, including, but not limited to, sadomasochistic abuse, sexual bestiality, or the simulation of any act involving sexual activity in the presence of a victim who is less than 16 years of age, commits lewd or lascivious exhibition.

(c) An offender 18 years of age or older who commits a lewd or lascivious exhibition commits a felony of the second degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084

I could go on with all the Florida statutes he could have been charged under, but I don't have all night.

3

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

But the above makes me wonder - the initial girl (Jane Doe) was 15, yes? So if there is evidence (or at least accusations) that he got 15 year old girls to strip down to their underwear, 'massage' him while he was naked, and he used vibrators on them and/or jerked off in their presence, then paid them - surely that is something more than "well he did a little bit naughty in paying for a massage from an unlicensed person"?

I'll preface this by saying that I don't have access to full transcripts of OPR interviews with the people from the State's Attorney's office, and while the grand jury transcripts have been released, I can't find anything specifying what charging options were presented. But my speculation based on what has been released is this: The State's Attorney was concerned about the ethical implications of charging Epstein with prostitution-related offenses without charging the prostitutes themselves. Krischer had previously charged girls as young as 14 with prostitution, but he clearly recognized that the girls here had been taken advantage of, and the office was uneasy about charging witnesses who came forward.

I think that more importantly, though, Epstein was already offered a misdemeanor plea he refused, and if he tried to nail his ass to the wall he'd be looking at a trial that would be a fucking mess. You mention credibility issues, but it's not just a matter of whether the jury believes the girls, but whether the jury believes they were abused. Remember, this was a time when the public was sneering at kids like this on a daily basis, as Maury Povich sending incorrigible teens off to boot camp was mainstream (if lowbrow) entertainment. It wasn't so much that a jury wouldn't believe what happened, but that they wouldn't be able to view the girls as victims. Adding to the problem, the case hinges on the girls testifying to all of this bad behavior in open court, and even if you can keep some of it out, the fact still remains that they have to admit to prostituting themselves, some on multiple occasions, and to recruiting other girls to do the same thing.

These days juries are much more sympathetic to the idea that kids in these kinds of situations often have serious problems, and it's easier to paint a guy like Epstein as someone who recognized how vulnerable they were and took advantage of them. But it wasn't clear yet in 2006. Federal prosecutions require a grand jury indictment, but in state court the normal procedure is to file an "information", which results in some kind of preliminary hearing in front of a judge to determine if there's probable cause to go to trial. Grand juries are only used in unusual situations; they can be investigative tools since witnesses can testify under subpoena, and they're often used for complicated cases involving organized crime, public corruption, etc. I think that the decision to take the Epstein case to the grand jury was a consequence of the State's Attorney's uncertainty about how a jury would react to the evidence, especially in the face of an aggressive defense. It would give them a chance to defer the charges to somebody else, rather than filing the charges police wanted them to file and taking the chance that the case would fall flat.

As I said, I don't know what charging options the grand jury was given, but for the sake of argument I'll assume that the charges the police were pushing for were among the options. After the transcripts were released last year, prosecutor Lanna Behlolovick was criticized extensively in the media for apparently sandbagging her case by only having two girls testify and bringing up all the bad behavior. I disagree with this assessment. I think she knew that the defense was going to bring it up at trial and she wanted to see how a jury would react. One difference between grand juries and trial juries is that grand jurors have the opportunity to question witnesses, and the questions asked by the grand jurors don't evidence much sympathy. Some of them made glib comments to that effect. This was especially the case when a detective presented the evidence of other girls who had been abused (hearsay is admissible in grand jury proceedings), and they weren't at any risk of offending the girls directly. If they were offered a full slate of charges but only indicted on the solicitation charge, it's evidence that the case was a loser. There's also evidence that the grand jury's unwillingness to indict factored into Acosta's decision to seek a pre-indictment plea, since a Federal jury wasn't likely to be any better on that front. Having immersed myself in this whole mess, it causes me to wonder what the public reaction would be now if Epstein had been charged with serious crimes but acquitted. Would this even be something we're talking about now?

5

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

To clarify, when police searched Epstein's house as part of the initial investigation, the computers had already been removed. Later, the FBI learned that they were in the custody of a certain individual, and the USAO requested that they be turned over. Epstein's attorneys initially agreed to produce them by a certain date, then asked for an extension, and on the extension deadline they took legal action to prevent having to turn them over. By this point negotiations were underway, and in the course of negotiations the USAO agreed to postpone the date of the hearing, which was then rescheduled for late September. By this point, the self-imposed indictment deadline was nearing, and the parties were close to a deal, and they agreed to postpone the hearing indefinitely, Once the deal was signed the matter was dropped.

I agree with you that they should have pushed the computer issue a little harder, but I can understand why they didn't. The idea that they would contain evidence that improved the prosecution's position was speculative. I wouldn't call it incompetence so much as poor judgment. If the computers contained video of Epstein engaging in the sex acts that they already knew about, it would improve the case, but not by much. They could have been a game changer, but that was conditioned on them containing child pornography, or worse, containing evidence that he transmitted CP over the internet.

We need to step back and consider what they were likely dealing with. This was 2005, and the taping system probably wasn't brand new. You were looking at 480p tops, compressed, taken with a wide angle lens. I don't have any information about the camera equipment that the police discovered, but they did mention that the cameras were hooked up to the computers for recording. Epstein could certainly afford commercial-grade recording equipment, but most such equipment would have recorded to disc at the time, and not a PC. So we're likely looking at webcams. In either event, though, any video would have been low-resolution and recorded from a fixed vantage point. Webcam videos from 2005 weren't great, and commercial surveillance video wasn't much better. There would have been problems authenticating the video and identifying the victim as a minor.

I think that Acosta's plan was stupid and ultimately ineffective. It's certainly not what I would have done had I been in charge. However, once they were committed to that course of action, I don't think that yielding on the computer issue was a huge mistake. A mistake, yes, but not a huge one. It's pretty clear that the defense strategy was to draw out the process as long as possible. If the prosecutors had insisted on sticking to the September hearing, it would have required postponing the indictment deadline again, since they'd need to give time for the defense to turn over the computers and for the FBI to analyze them, and then to figure out what what to do with the information. The defense holding back could have just been a ruse to get another extension. I personally think that once they became aware that the defense had the computers they should have put everything on hold until they got them, but Acosta was hell-bent on state charges and thought a deal would be easy. I think Acosta just figured that the indictment was ready to go and if they made a deal he'd be happy and if they had to indict there was plenty of time to get the computers. I don't think he wanted to delay things based on the speculation that there might be evidence of other crimes. It was a bad decision but it was understandable.

8

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

Giving a bone to the truth while slipping in falsehoods and lies is a staple of getting away with a cover-up to begin with, we would expect the official documents to conflict.

Which of the statements I made above do you think are falsehoods?

Why are they lying about the "raw footage" that was clearly edited? Why did the Trump admin officials continually claim there was a list that they were gonna be releasing beforehand?

Because Trump tells his base what he wants to hear and doesn't expect to have his feet held to the fire. He knew damn well all along that there wasn't any evidence that would satisfy whatever wild fantasies his base harbors, so he figured he could make empty promises and then forget about them when it came time to deliver. Except he hired morons like Pam Bondi who might actually be true believers and who like him don't know when to shut up, and all of the sudden people were actually expecting him to release stuff that would blow the case wide open, and the whole thing has turned into quicksand where the more Trump tries to wriggle out the deeper he sinks.

Honestly, I don't really give a shit about Trump's role in the whole thing. Believe me, there's nothing I'd like more than for his entire presidency to be destroyed, but I don't see any actual evidence of malfeasance. I think Trump has a reflex where he tries to automatically put as much distance between himself and anything he thinks will hurt him, to the point where he never stops to consider that there may be definitive contradictory evidence. Then again, maybe he just has a horrible memory. It was the same thing with the Billy Bush pussy tape, where he initially claimed to his staff that he wasn't worried about it because it never happened, and then the tape came out. This is a guy who said that of course he didn't rape E. Jean Carroll because she wasn't hot enough for him to be interested in, only to mistake her for his wife in a photograph. If you're going to ask me for a logical explanation of why Donald Trump or certain people in his administration do things, I don't have an answer for you.

I just don't extend that same level of skepticism to anything that came out before January of this year. Previous administrations, including the first Trump administration, seem to have been run, at least at the "deep state" level, by professionals who largely knew what they were doing. I don't have any reason to believe that the Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility was, in 2019 and 2020, filled with partisan hacks looking to effect a coverup. I have no evidence that such is the case even now. I haven't seen any "official" evidence that contradicts any unofficial evidence of the same caliber. If you want to argue that something is incorrect, then I welcome your argument. But you can't just dismiss everything out of hand because you don't like the people in charge.

6

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

I would just keep the money and forward whatever they sent me to whoever the instructions said to send it to. More likely, I'd look at it and give the scoop to a local TV producer I know. That way, in addition to the big story, there will be a sub-drama of how a guy who mostly did sports stories for a station in Pittsburgh managed to break the story of the century.

9

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

I want to see camera footage of Epstein killing himself. If no such footage is provided, then it didn't happen. Footage of corridors is not a substitute. There's no excuse for 'oh we lost the camera footage, my bad'.

What makes you so sure that Epstein is even dead? The whole hanging thing could have been the perfect ruse to get him out of the jail and never seen again, while all you rubes focus on conspiracy theories relating to his demise. That would make more sense than what everyone seems to be proposing.

9

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

Understanding the Real Epstein Files

One of the things that pisses me off the most about conspiracy theories is that the people who are often most invested of them have done very little actual research into the known facts. For all the JFK conspiracy theorists out there, I reckon no more than a handful have actually read the Warren Commission Report. If you're going to question the official narrative, it helps to know what the official narrative actually is, and if you're going to allege a conspiracy theory, it helps if it isn't directly contradicted somewhere in the 26 volumes of supporting documentation. Public understanding of the Kennedy assassination, though, is much better than that of the Epstein scandal, which is surprising since the Epstein scandal has much more contemporary relevance. Over the past week or so, with the discussion on here, I've seen numerous people, including those whose opinions I normally respect, make certain statements that suggest that they have no actual understanding of the events in question. I'm not going to name any names or cite any specific examples, because it's not going to do any good, and I don't necessarily disagree with the conclusions they've drawn, but it seems like various aspects of the case have become conflated, and certain interpolations have entered the public consciousness that no reasonable person would make if they were familiar with the actual facts as they are known.

This is especially relevant in light of the recent (February) tranche of documents that has been released concerning Epstein. There was widespread disappointment that the documents didn't reveal anything that wasn't already known from various court filings. The real reason they were disappointing is that they didn't directly implicate anyone who wasn't already implicated. The public has created a narrative that has little relationship with the facts, and they're completely ignorant of any information that doesn't support that narrative. I've spent the past several weeks reviewing the Real Epstein Files, i.e. what's already been publicly released, and will attempt to describe relevant facts relating to two popular Epstein-related conspiracy theories: The widely-known theory that Epstein was murdered, and the more recently popularized theory that he was a Mossad agent. With respect to the second one, I'm going to specifically focus on the idea that the Sweetheart Deal he got in 2007 was the result of his status as an intelligence agent, because recounting the story of what happened in the US Attorney's office has the added benefit of providing a detailed description of what he was actually accused of, and, more importantly, what he wasn't accused of.

A Recounting of the Events that Led to Jeffrey Epstein's Initial Prosecution

In February of 2005, two high school freshmen got into a fight in gym class. Earlier that morning, Jane Doe had confided in her best friend that a rich guy had paid her $300 to giver him a massage over the weekend. The friend spent the rest of the morning telling other people, and by gym class it seemed like the whole school knew. Jane was not happy about this, and the two girls got into an argument, which resulted in a trip to the principal's office. The principle asked to search Jane's purse, where she found the $300. She claimed it was from her job. She claimed it was from selling drugs. The principal said she already knew where it came from. The girl talked.

Once Jane's parents found out, the incident was reported to police in Palm Beach. Another girl at the school had told Jane she could make a lot of money giving a rich old guy a massage, no experience necessary. When they got to the house, Mr. Epstein had Jane strip to her underwear while she gave him a massage. He was naked. He held up a vibrator to her crotch. Jane then watched the other girl do the same thing, except this time he masturbated, and fondled the girl with the vibrator while her panties were down. Then she was paid and asked for her phone number, and told she could make money any time she wanted, and would be given $200 for each girl she recruited to work for him.

The police launched an investigation, eventually identifying 29 victims in all. The stories were more or less the same: He's recruit teenage girls to give him massages, during which he would masturbate and fondle them. Sometimes the girls were clothed, sometimes they were naked. With some girls, he'd eventually offer more money for oral or vaginal sex. Some of the girls had only been there once, others were there dozens of times, and admitted to recruiting other girls for Epstein. It's worth noting here that there was no evidence at this point that Epstein had sex with anyone under the age of 18, and there is no evidence that any of the girls were coerced or threatened. Indeed, most claimed they were told at the outset that they wouldn't be expected to do anything they weren't comfortable with. While the details varied, there was an obvious pattern of behavior.

Police in Palm Beach brought the case to the State's Attorney, and were initially given an enthusiastic reception. Then the shit hit the fan. In a bid to halt the prosecution, Epstein's attorneys hired investigators to dig up dirt on the accusers. They marched into the State's Attorney's office with reams of information they had gathered. Social media posts evidencing alcohol and drug use, social media posts evidencing promiscuity. Behavioral problems. Minor criminal convictions. The witnesses would have credibility problems. That is, the ones who would actually testify. Most didn't want to participate, and the original complainant retracted her allegations. Epstein hired an attorney who worked for the same firm as a prosecutor's spouse, causing that prosecutor to be removed from the case. Epstein had evidently been tipped off to a search warrant police executed in October, as the computers connected to the house's hidden camera system had been removed. And if all this weren't enough, the girls had been paid, at a time when Florida was still prosecuting girls as young as 14 for prostitution, making it hard to prosecute Epstein without prosecuting the witnesses.

State's Attorney Barry Krischer wasn't sure how to proceed, as there wasn't much Epstein could be charged with, from a legal perspective. He was offered a misdemeanor plea for 5 years probation. He turned it down, insisting on a no contest plea. Typically in Florida, the State's Attorney will directly file charges by way of an information, bur Krischer decided to prepare for a grand jury, intending to charge Epstein with a single count of solicitation. Meanwhile Chief Reiter of the Palm Beach police was growing impatient. He felt that the State's Attorney wasn't taking the allegations seriously, and he waved away the credibility issues that Krischer was concerned about. He talked to a friend in the FBI, who put him in touch with Ann Marie Villafaña, an AUSA who specialized in crimes involving exploited children.

Making a Federal Case Out of It

In May, 2006, Villafaña opened up a case on Epstein. Reiter had expressed concerns that the scorched earth approach of Epstein's attorneys had caused the state prosecution to stall, as the debate at that time was between charging Epstein with a misdemeanor and not charging him at all. Villafaña then took the unusual step of involving Alex Acosta. The concern was that Epstein's attorneys were so aggressive that what happened in Palm Beach could happen federally. It was a complicated case involving numerous victims and multiple states, but she was willing to put in the time and the FBI was willing to put in the money. She didn't want the whole thing to be wasted, though, due to last-minute legal shenanigans. She wanted to make her case to Acosta to get his word that he wouldn't back down to pressure, though she really wanted to inoculate him to the reality that Epstein's lawyers would be knocking on his door. At this point, neither Acosta nor anyone else in the US Attorney's office had heard of Epstein, but Acosta gave her the green light. His office had just successfully prosecuted Jack Abramoff, and wasn't worried about Dershowitz or anyone else.

In the meantime, a grand jury in Florida indicted Epstein on a single count of felony solicitation (solicitation being a felony in Florida if done on three or more occasions). Villafaña feared that the Florida State's Attorney planned on using the indictment as leverage to get Epstein to plead to a lesser charge. Had Epstein done so prior to the USAO formally initiating an investigation, this would have created significant barriers for a Federal investigation, since departmental policy only allows for Federal prosecution of crimes that have already been handled in state court in extraordinary circumstances. Villafaña formally initiated the Federal investigation on July 26, 2006, making the notable decision not to inform the Palm Beach County State's Attorney, as she was concerned his office would leak the investigation's existence to Epstein's attorneys. The FBI soon began looking into the matter, and was beginning to identify more victims.

Villafaña's concern about a leak notwithstanding, Epstein quickly learned about the investigation, as the FBI was interviewing his employees and demanding documents. His attorneys reached out to Villafaña in October, requesting a meeting, but Villafaña declined. Epstein hired attorneys with contacts in the USAO. The case at the time was being supervised by Andrew Lourie, head of the West Palm Beach branch office; Matthew Menchel, Criminal Division Chief; and Jeffrey H. Sloman, First Assistant US Attorney, along with Acosta. Epstein's new attorneys bypassed Villafaña and requested a meeting from Lourie, which he granted.

The First Cracks Appear

I'm going to pause for a moment to explain some of the legal niceties of the case, as they will become relevant later when examining Acosta's actions. As most of you know, garden-variety crimes are generally handled by state courts, with the Federal government only getting involved with cases that either cross state lines or offend some other Federal interest. When Villafaña agreed to take the case, she did so because she believed the following Federal interests were involved:

That Epstein had victimized minors through the facilities of interstate commerce, namely airplanes and telephones
The large number of victims
The cameras in Epstein's residence suggested the possibility that he had been producing child pornography
The possibility that the state investigation had stalled due to political pressure applied by Epstein's attorneys

I would note that these weren't necessarily all things that Villafaña saw as the immediate basis of Federal charges. These were things that, based on the evidence the PBPD gave her, that she though a Federal investigation might uncover, and that, had they been uncovered, would have been the basis for Federal charges. With respect to the first item, there was no substantial evidence at this point that Epstein transported a minor on his airplane. The Federal nexus was that Epstein, not a Florida resident, used his airplane to travel to Florida for the purpose of engaging in sexual conduct with minors, in violation of various Federal statutes.

Another issue at play here is the appropriateness of a Federal prosecution. As you probably know, there can be substantial overlap between state crimes and Federal crimes. While there is no constitutional bar for multiple prosecutions for the same conduct involving different sovereigns, the Justice Department does not wish to subject defendants to repeated prosecution. Since 1960, DOJ has followed the Petite Policy, which states the following (from the US Attorney's Manual):

This policy precludes the initiation or continuation of a federal prosecution, following a prior state or federal prosecution based on substantially the same act(s) or transaction(s) unless three substantive prerequisites are satisfied: first, the matter must involve a substantial federal interest; second, the prior prosecution must have left that interest demonstrably unvindicated; and third, applying the same test that is applicable to all federal prosecutions, the government must believe that the defendant's conduct constitutes a federal offense, and that the admissible evidence probably will be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction by an unbiased trier of fact. In addition, there is a procedural prerequisite to be satisfied, that is, the prosecution must be approved by the appropriate Assistant Attorney General.

Villafaña was vehemently opposed to meeting with Epstein's attorneys. At this point in the investigation, Epstein hadn't been charged, and she felt that they requested the meeting as an attempt to get the prosecutors to tip their hand as to what they planned on charging him with. She felt that having a meeting that early was something you did with white collar criminals who were likely to admit to specific conduct but dispute the nature of the charges. As Epstein was being charged with sex crimes, however, he wasn't likely to admit to anything. Lourie was of a different opinion. He believed that since the defense had reached out to them, they must have something to say, and since they haven't drafted an indictment yet, they may give away their defense strategy ahead of time. Therefore, they could gain an advantage by drafting the indictment to head of defense arguments at the pass. On February 1, 2007, Villafaña and Lourie met with Epstein's attorneys, who anticipated charges being brought and put forth the following arguments against them:

There was no basis for Federal jurisdiction
There was no evidence that Epstein knew the girls providing the massages were minors
There was no evidence proving that any girl had traveled interstate
The USAO was in violation of the Petite Policy since the allegations had already been addressed by the state
There were witness credibility issues

Villafaña's concerns aside, the meeting achieved everything the prosecutors could have hoped for. The defense told them where they were going to challenge, and they were able to tailor their case to those arguments. Villafaña prepared a draft indictment and memorandum, with the intention of filing on May 15. Lourie took a look at it and agreed with it, but wanted to take a more conservative path. The charges, if proven, were damning, and would see Epstein facing somewhere between 15 and 20 years in prison per the sentencing guidelines, with the conduct so egregious that it would call for an upward adjustment. Once indicted, any plea deal would require judicial approval, and, after seeing the scope of Epstein's misconduct, no judge would agree to a deal that involved substantially reduced or dropped charges. They felt the case was solid, but not a slam dunk, and were worried that an indictment would force them to take the case to trial, since they would have no flexibility with respect to a plea. Lourie wanted to arrest Epstein and charge him pre-indictment. He would be detained, and the prosecutors would be in a position to negotiate on their own terms.

More importantly, Lourie felt that he should let his superiors in Miami review the indictment before going forward. He and Villafaña had gone out on a limb involving Acosta early, and he didn't want to sign off on anything without running it up the chain. Menchel and Sloman reviewed it, but they wanted Acosta to take a look at it as well, and he was on vacation and had 700 other things to do once he got back. In the meantime, Eptstein's attorneys wanted another meeting, this time with a list of contemplated charges provided in advance, and with Acosta and other senior USAO managers present. As Lourie put it "they want me to tell them the statutes we're contemplating so Dershowitz can tell us why they don't apply". Villafaña, of course, was opposed to another meeting altogether. This wasn't a white collar case where they were negotiating the details of a light sentence, but a serious crime with substantial prison time at stake. She had already heard from Epstein's attorney's, who characterized their position as 1. The Petite Policy precludes Federal prosecution, 2. This shouldn't be a Federal offense, and 3. The victims were all complicit so they shouldn't be prosecuting. Ergo, the only reason for the meeting was for Epstein's attorneys to convince them to drop the case, and unless they were willing to do that, there was no reason to meet. She felt like the same thing the PBPD warned her about was happening again.

The USAO agreed to another meeting, though Acosta was not present and they weren't given the charges in advance. Dershowitz made arguments that certain charges shouldn't apply, with the overall theme that this was a state matter that shouldn't have any federal involvement. Epstein's attorneys walked away thinking they had convinced the Feds to drop the case. This wasn't true, but prosecutors were concerned about the travel issue. Specifically, the prosecution would have to prove that Epstein traveled to Florida specifically for the purpose of engaging in sex with minors. Dershowitz argued that Epstein had other reasons to travel to Florida, though nothing particularly compelling or specific. The prosecution felt this was their biggest weakness, but they were able to buttress it with the argument that he had created a network of high school girls willing to give him massages, and that it would be very difficult to recreate such a network in another place. Things were still going fairly well for the prosecution, but Villafaña became increasingly concerned with the glacial timeline her superiors in Miami were using to make a charging decision. Villafaña's initial charging memorandum was dated May 1, and Lourie submitted it to Miami a few days later. But the initial May 15 target date had come and gone, and the meeting with Epstein's attorneys was on June 26. She had been informed that it wouldn't be approved quickly, but this was excessive, and it's still unclear whether Acosta even read it himself before making a decision.

Down the Primrose Path

In early July, Acosta made a fateful decision that would define his role in the case. But we can't understand why Epstein got off with such a light sentence without understanding the difference of philosophical opinion that existed between him and Villafaña, and between the Miami brass and the West Palm Beach branch office more broadly. To Villafaña, the issue was pretty clear: Epstein had committed Federal crimes and should be prosecuted for them, the same as any other criminal who had committed Federal crimes. That was the end of the story, and she wasn't going to treat his case any differently than any other sex offender. Acosta saw things differently. He was under the opinion, shared among many posters here, that Federal authority was too broad. He didn't like the idea of his office trying to gin up an interstate nexus just so that they could prosecute what would traditionally be a state crime. He was uncomfortable with the idea of his office getting involved in a local prosecution because they didn't like how the local authorities were handling it.

To Acosta, the role of his office in the Epstein case was to act as a backstop to an injustice that a local prosecutor was allowing to happen. He appears to have strongly felt that yes, the State's Attorney was allowing Epstein to get away with reprehensible conduct, and his office had a responsibility to prevent that from happening. But he didn't feel that the risk of a full-blown federal prosecution was worth it if an alternative could be arranged. The way he saw it, it wasn't fundamentally a sex trafficking case, but a prostitution case, and solicitation of prostitution is traditionally a state concern. Furthermore, he wasn't sure a jury would view it as a sex trafficking case, either, and they might acquit on that basis, regardless of the technical wording of the statute. There was also the witness credibility problem, which hadn't gone away.

Thus, Acosta made the decision that the best way to get out of this was to use the threat of a Federal indictment to induce Epstein to plead to state charges. He wanted a deal that involved three things: Jail time, sex offender registration, and victim compensation. In his view, if local prosecutors had credibly threatened Epstein with charges that would result in those three things, the PBPD would never have reached out to Villafaña. With these goals in mind, the USAO began negotiations with Epstein's attorneys.

The attorneys did not act like they were being offered a gift. They took Acosta's minimum demands as a starting point for negotiations, which they continually frustrated. Their initial counteroffer was that Epstein wouldn't register as a sex offender and accept home confinement in lieu of jail time. And also that certain state procedures would be used to ensure "maximum flexibility" in sentencing. The defense team engaged in the time-honored tactic of agreeing to a term in principle and moving on to the next one, and then, when it appeared they were getting close to a deal, backtracking on the proposed terms or proposing alterations. They would agree orally to certain provisions, and when it looked like an agreement was about to be finalized, they'd send out a draft with wildly different terms. At one point they proposed a "hybrid" plea that would encompass state and Federal charges, only to reject it after the USAO drafted a proposed agreement. They tried to do various end arounds involving the State Attorney's office. The history of this period is frustrating to even read, and must have been a nightmare to be involved in. As various internal deadlines approached, Villafaña was ready to throw up her hands and file charges, but was overruled by her superiors, who were convinced the finish line was in sight. Finally, on September 26, after Acosta had made it abundantly clear that this was the final deadline and charges would be filed if a deal wasn't reached by 5 pm, Epstein agreed to the NPA. He would serve 18 months in a county detention facility, with no possibility for early release, followed by one year of home confinement, would register as a sex offender, and would provide restitution for victims under provisions of Federal law.

The End of the Beginning

Popular reporting would have you believe that, having gotten off with a slap on the wrist, Epstein quietly served his sentence and then disappeared into private life until the story was blown open at the end of 2018. This is not the case. While prosecutors were initially relieved to have completed the deal, their problems with Epstein's defense team were only beginning. In fact, the NPA had actually improved Epstein's position, at least temporarily, because it eliminated the threat of Federal prosecution. Almost immediately, Epstein's attorneys began collateral attacks against the terms of the agreement, insisting that they be interpreted in ways favorable to them. The major sticking point was that the victim compensation provision, which allowed victims to file claims under Federal law, was inappropriately being applied to state charges. They attacked this provision repeatedly from various angles, in an apparent (and successful) attempt to delay sentencing. They made repeated requests to eliminate or renegotiate terms that weren't even at issue. It got so bad that Acosta threw up his hands at one point and offered to mutually rescind the deal. If you don't like it, we don't either, and you can take your chances with an indictment. No, Acosta was assured, Epstein wanted to keep the deal in place, they were just working out some small details.

These collateral attacks delayed Epstein's sentencing for months, and resulted in an addendum to the original NPA being executed resolving the issues. Some people in the USAO wanted to take the position that, in light of the stalling and attacks on the agreement, they should just find that he was in breach and indict him on the Federal charges. Others realized that this would only be playing into his hands, as such a breach would be challenged, and the ensuing litigation would only drag things out longer. Complicating the situation was that the NPA did not include a firm date by which Epstein was to be sentenced.

Even after the addendum was executed and the collateral attacks stopped, it didn't end Epstein's quest to avoid prosecution. Running out of options, his attorney decided to attack the Federal prosecutors themselves. They commissioned opinions that assessed various improprieties in the investigation, and sent letters to Acosta accusing Villafaña and the office as a whole of misconduct. Villafaña wasn't worried about the ethics accuasations, but she had another concern—the case was growing stale. The NPA had been executed at the end of September. As the year was coming to a close, and it still wasn't clear when, if ever, Epstein would plead. If he were to draw this out much longer and reneg, there might not be a case left for them to indict on. So now she had to take the unusual step of reinterviewing witnesses to prepare them for a grand jury in a case that had supposedly settled.

Unsatisfied with Acosta's refusal to budge, Epstein's attorneys then took the matter to Washington. They had repeatedly threatened Acosta with this action if he didn't agree to material changes to the NPA, but he simply told them it was their right to seek a departmental review. The review went nowhere, but it did delay Epstein's sentencing for another five months. The most interesting thing about this is that it is the first time any of Epstein's high-profile friends were mentioned in connection to the case. However, it's not in a context one would expect; Ken Starr—yes, that Ken Starr—co-authored a letter to Deputy AG Mark Filip that in part alleged that the prosecution of Epstein was unfairly motivated by his personal association with Bill Clinton! Oh, if Starr had only then realized how ironic such an assertion would seem 15 years later.

That summer, Epstein finally pleaded guilty and began serving his sentence. This still didn't end matters entirely. First, he was evidently staying in the "stockade" at the sheriff's office instead of the county jail. Evidently, the NPA only specified "a county detention facility". Then he was granted work release for a position that hadn't existed before he was sentenced. 12 hours a day, six days a week at his attorney's office. Well, the NPA said that he would actually serve the 18 months, but it didn't say anything about work release. The USAO insisted that numerous emails between counsel indicated that he was actually expected to be in a physical jail during this period, but the defense disagreed. Work release was within the purview of the Sheriff's department, and they were just treating him like any other prisoner. And if he were denied, the matter would be litigated. There was little the USAO could do at this point. Though by this point, things had changed. Menchel had left the USAO for private practice the previous summer, as negotiations were going on, and his successor wasn't involved in the case. Lourie had taken a position in Washington, and he left South Florida shortly after the NPA was signed (though he did occasionally involve himself thereafter). Acosta was on his way out as US Attorney and had accepted a position in private practice which required him to recuse himself from the case. Villafaña and Sloman were the only two left at this point, and Sloman had been the least involved of the five.

So What Does This Have to Do with Anything?

The foregoing, as long as it is, is the Reader's Digest Condensed Version of the entire affair. There is a lot of detail I left out, so forgive me for, in the future, referring to facts not in evidence, as it were, but at least you understand the broad strokes of what happened. That being said, considering the obnoxious level of detail with which I have familiarized myself for this case, I can't help but laugh when someone suggests that Acosta said he was told that Epstein had something to do with intelligence and to leave the matter alone. First. the claim that he said that is dubious. To be clear, Acosta never said that publicly; a journalist for The Daily Beast reported that she was told by a Senior Trump Administration Official that during his interview for Labor Secretary he gave that as a response when asked about why Epstein got the deal he did. At best, that's double hearsay with an anonymous intermediary. At worst, it's a Washington rumor being reported as fact because it came from the right person; we don't even know that the official in question even heard the alleged remark.

I'm not going to defend the way Acosta handled the Epstein case, because it's clear that he exercised terrible judgment. But there's nothing in the record to suggest he left it alone. He gave the initial green light. He did nothing to impede the actual investigation into Epstein. The FBI was actively investigating the case all the way up to the point that the NPA was executed. They were still identifying new victims, including ones in New York. He stuck to his guns regarding his minimum requirements for a deal, even through defense shenanigans, and made it clear to his subordinates that they were to indict if a deal couldn't be reached by the deadline. There's no inflection point in the timeline where Acosta obviously decided to call off his dogs. If he had indeed been told to leave it alone, he could have done a lot more than spend months hammering out an agreement and even more months defending that agreement from collateral attacks. He could have simply said "This is a state matter. I'm not going to bootstrap solicitation of prostitution into a Federal sex trafficking charge just because some police chief doesn't like how the local prosecutor is handling the case. Furthermore, the evidentiary issues are real and they are just as real for this office as they are for the State's Attorney. I'm not going to second-guess his judgment here."

Such a theory also doesn't explain how other people acted during the investigation. If Epstein knew he was getting a sweetheart deal in exchange for his silence, he sure didn't act like it. His attorneys dragged out negotiations longer than necessary with little apparent benefit. They continued to fuck around for nine months after the agreement had been entered into, most of which was a complete waste of time. One can argue that it was all part of some big performance to make it look like Epstein was getting seriously punished, but it was a performance that nobody was watching. If there had been intelligence concerns, it certainly doesn't explain why the Deputy AG gave Ken Starr the bum's rush when he asked for departmental review. Sure, it stalled the case for five months, but that's all it did. Mark Filip basically told Starr that if he wanted them to look at the case he could get in line, and at that they would only do a limited review of certain issues, not the full review that Starr had requested.

So What Happened?

Acosta executed poor judgment, plain and simple. But it was ultimately a failure of management. Villafaña had informed him of the issues with the case from the beginning, but by involving senior management early on, senior management became more involved in the case than they should have been. The decision to charge Epstein would have typically been Lourie's, but he now felt obligated to run things up the chain to Miami for their opinion, and the people above him in Miami felt the need to get Acosta's opinion on how to proceed. The situation arose where Acosta was making all the important decisions, but was far removed from the actual work being done on the case. He was simultaneously too involved and not involved enough, and it was a recipe for disaster.

After reviewing the charging memorandum and draft indictment, his own understanding of the weaknesses of the case combined with his prosecutorial philosophy led him to make the decision to pursue a pre-indictment plea deal to state charges. Once he was convinced that this was the solution to the case, he refused to waver from this position, and he was too far away from the actual negotiations to have an understanding of why it might not have been a good idea. When Villafaña expressed her frustration with the process to Menchel and requested that everyone, including Acosta, sit down for a meeting, she was rebuked and told that she wasn't going to get a meeting with the big boss just to tell him she disagreed with his decisions. Acosta, for his part, thought that he was simply setting a broad policy that his subordinates were executing.

The best example of how this led to poor decision making is the question of the missing computer equipment. If you remember way back at the beginning, the PBPD had executed a search warrant and computers hooked up to a taping system were missing. Around the time negotiations started, the FBI had discovered the name of the person holding the computer equipment. The FBI had information suggesting that the defense team had examined the computers. Villafaña requested that the defense turn it over. They refused. She filed a motion compelling them to turn it over. She wanted to condition negotiations on getting all of the requested documents, including the computers. Negotiations went ahead anyway. The hearing on the motion ended up being indefinitely postponed because of the negotiations.

One gets the impression that everyone assumed that since a deal was imminent there was no point in worrying about the motion or getting access to the computers. Acosta charted a course and followed it to the exclusion of all other options. It never once seemed to occur to him, or to anyone on the team save Villafaña, that the computers could contain evidence that would strengthen their negotiating position. It certainly never occurred to him that they could contain evidence that would strengthen their case to the point that he'd be able to ditch the negotiations and proceed with the indictment. It was also around this time that the FBI became aware that Epstein had photographed an underage girl at his home in New York. It was clear from the arrangement of the cameras that they would have captured sexual activity inside the Florida house. Most child predators possess significant amounts of child pornography. Had prosecutors discovered evidence that Epstein had transmitted images of underage girls between New York and Florida, it would have obliterated any Federal nexus question the defense threw at them.

But that's just speculative. More importantly, Acosta's insistence on a state charge made the prosecution completely dependent on a state office whose inaction led to the Federal investigation in the first place. Federal prosecutors did not have a good enough understanding of Florida law to realize how Epstein would be able to rig the system in his favor following conviction. Hanlon's Razor warns us not to attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. But this isn't even incompetence. Acosta was facing a difficult case with determined defense attorneys, and in a normal case his strategy probably would have worked as intended. But this wasn't a normal case; the defense attorneys were skilled enough that they were able to sense the managerial dysfunction in the USAO. They knew that Acosta was committed to the plea deal and that they could keep throwing up roadblocks because he didn't want to indict. They knew he wasn't supervising the case directly, and that they could yank on the chains of his subordinates without affecting his position. It wasn't until after the NDA, when the collateral attacks started, that Acosta became more involved and ran out of patience, but by that time there was little he could do that wouldn't make things worse.

What's Missing

I don't want to get too into the weeds about specific allegations that were made about Epstein outside of the context of the initial investigation and prosecution, but it's worth noting what didn't come up. First, there was no mention of any prominent connections. None of the people involved knew who Epstein was prior to the investigation, and if it was subsequently discovered that he kowtowed with prominent people, this wasn't mentioned anywhere. None of the victims ever alleged that anyone other than Epstein had abused them. Prosecutors couldn't find any evidence that any victim had traveled interstate with Epstein, or indeed that they were abused anywhere other than his house in Palm Beach. This is despite desperately looking for such evidence, as it would have made the Federal prosecution a lot easier. The 2019 indictment of Epstein is limited to his abuse of three girls between 2002 and 2005. The indictment of Ghlisaine Maxwell is based on the abuse of two girls between 1994 and 1997. Maxwell's name didn't come up in the 2006/2007 investigation, and there's no evidence that the prosecution was even aware of her.

The idea that Epstein was running a whorehouse for the rich and famous that was really some kind of extortion operation, or even that powerful men were banging girls Epstein procured, is based on allegations made in civil lawsuits filed after the initial investigation ended. I haven't done a comprehensive examination of the materials involved in these lawsuits, because, well, this post is long enough as it is. Suffice it to say that only a few victims have ever alleged that they were abused by anyone other than Epstein. Bradley Edwards, who represented over 200 of Epstein's victims, including Virginia Giuffre, explicitly disavowed the notion that the girls were there for anyone but Epstein. He contends that a select few girls may have had sex with a select few of Epstein's associates, but that the vast bulk of victims were only abused by Epstein. The situation most of the conspiracy theorists envision is that which takes certain allegations raised by about 1% of the represented victims and spins it into a typical scenario, and at that it goes far beyond anything Giuffre actually testified to. None of these theories are based on facts, just conjecture.

Epstein's Death

I don't want to belabor this point, since I've been pretty vocal explaining how preposterous the idea that Epstein was murdered is since before the body was even cold, but there's one point that I would like to make. No one ever mentions the findings of the medical examiner. Forensic pathologist Michael Baden, who Epstein's brother hired to observe the autopsy, got publicity for stating publicly that he thought Epstein was murdered because his hyoid bone was broken, and that is indicative of manual strangulation and not hanging. Conspiracy theorists seized on this as evidence of murder. But, as I've said, more important is what Baden didn't say. The ME presented numerous findings that were indicative of hanging and not indicative of strangulation: The ligature pattern, the pattern of neck bones that were broken, the pattern of petechial hemorrhaging, the plethora, the presence or absence of other types of hemorrhaging, etc. And of particular importance, the absence of any defensive wounds whatsoever.

To me, regardless of the other evidence, this is the absolute showstopper. For Epstein to have been murdered, the assailant would have had to know how to do the job in such a way that it would cause certain things to happen but wouldn't cause other things to happen, and do it while Epstein didn't fight back at all. Baden focused on the hyoid bone, because it was all he had to go on. He hadn't seen a broken hyoid in a hanging in over 40 years of practice. Well, the literature estimates it happens in about 25% of hangings, and is particularly likely in older individuals. Baden didn't question any of the ME's other findings, even though he was there to observe the autopsy. He never felt the need to issue his own report, or conduct an independent autopsy, that listed the cause of death as homicide, or even undetermined. The medical evidence that Epstein was murdered is effectively zero. The non-medical evidence is nothing but a series of coincidences. There isn't any reason why any rational person should conclude that there was a conspiracy to have him murdered, when there's no evidence that he was even murdered.

Postmortem

About a week ago, a user here posted that Epstein's status as a Mossad agent was pretty much an established fact at this point, as sure as the sun rises every morning and sets every evening for anyone with half a brain, and then linked to a 5 1/2 hour compendium of Daryl Cooper podcasts to placate anyone who doubts this. There's only one problem: Daryl Cooper is full of shit. As I was writing this, I was intrigued to see what the other side of the story was, but I didn't have six hours to kill, so I pulled up the Tucker Carlson interview on YouTube and clicked to an arbitrary location. After listening for I while, I heard him say this:

It took a lot of courage to come out. And so when they went and cut a deal behind the backs of not only the lead prosecutor, but the victims and the victims lawyers, the thing was signed, done deal. Before anybody below like Alex Acosta's level even knew about it again, including the Department of Justice lead prosecutor.

If it isn't blindingly obvious by now, practically everyone involved in the case, especially the lead prosecutor, was heavily involved in the negotiation of the plea deal from the very beginning. Acosta, for what it's worth, was among the least involved in the whole process. Of the six meetings prosecutors had with the defense team prior to the agreement being signed, he was present at exactly one. Later in the process, after one of Epstein's attorneys attempted to reach Acosta directly, he directed Villafaña to return the call and told Lourie that he didn't want to open a backchannel. When the same attorney emailed Acosta asking for a phone call, Acosta said he would be happy to talk, but his staff would have to be on the call. Furthermore, the characterization of the NPA as a "done deal" is laughable, as it wasn't a done deal until nine months after it had been signed. And Acosta didn't even sign it; Villafaña initially put his name on it because she disagreed with it and expected him to own it, but he told her to put her name on it since she was lead prosecutor and it wasn't his role to be signing these things.

This information has been public knowledge for years. If Cooper wants to make bold claims about Epstein, the least he can do is look at it, and if he doesn't agree with its contents, explain the evidence he has to contradict it. I don't need to listen to any more Daryl Cooper. For a guy who claims to be a historian, he can't even get verifiable facts straight, and evidently isn't immune to making shit up if it doesn't support his narrative. More than likely, he had his narrative down and believed whatever media characterizations were made of the story without giving it a second thought. Then he repeated this without giving it a second thought because that was the public perception and who wants to read a bunch of boring emails that don't even contain any juicy information? He says a bunch of other shit that is equally factually incorrect but I don't have the time or the energy to dedicate my life to debunking Daryl Cooper conspiracy theories. All I ask is that anyone making claims like this take a look at the actual official sources before shooting their mouth off.

53

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

The Obama thing wasn't exactly a secret assassination. He held a press conference about it right after it happened. It later became controversial, but in the context of the legalities and official policy of the United States. And while you can point to MKULTRA and any number of other secret Cold War-era government programs as evidence that liberal democracy doesn't preclude shady government dealings, it's worth considering the context during which these things came to light. The Watergate scandal and everything surrounding it almost completely eroded the public's trust in government and brought down a sitting president who had been elected in a landslide less than two years earlier. It sowed a cynicism that hasn't abated since, and which the Epstein conspiracies are a direct consequence of. It's also worth pointing out that the project was going on at a time before informed consent guidelines really existed, and running those kinds of experiments on convicts and mental patients wouldn't shock the conscience the way they would today. During the same time period, Jonas Salk was testing his polio vaccine by going into orphanages and administering it to all the children there. There was no large-scale public discussion on the ethics of medical experimentation until the mid-1970s (largely a response to the 1972 revelation of the Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiments), and the FDA did not have published guidelines for drug testing until 1981. I'm not saying that the general public would have necessarily been okay with MKULTRA had they known about it at the time, just that the ethical issues involved aren't as unambiguous as murdering a US citizen on US soil and framing it up as a suicide. Anyway, while that's been a nice discussion, I'm not sure how relevant it is to your argument. As far as I understood, you were arguing that some outside actor had bribed one or two prison employees to murder Epstein, not that his death was sanctioned by high-ranking members of the government.

Keep in mind that the person that "added them to the mix" was Alexander Acosta. This is the entire rub of the story, and much stronger evidence than anything you bring up.

Acosta gets asked why did he let him off the hook so easily, and he says "I was told the guy belonged to intelligence".

Acosta didn't say this publicly. No one who heard Acosta say this reported this publicly. The quote is based on a 2019 opinion column in The Daily Beast where journalist Vicky Ward attributed it to an anonymous former Trump Administration official, who allegedly told her that Acosta said it during his Secretary of Labor interview in response to concerns that the Epstein deal would become an issue during his confirmation hearings. We don't have any additional context, most importantly whether the person Ward talked to even claimed to have heard this directly from Acosta, or if this was just a rumor they picked up. Acosta, for his part, has denied any knowledge of an intelligence operation, and so has everyone else who has gone on the record. But beyond that, the story doesn't make sense. Why would there be concern that a decade-old plea deal involving a guy nobody had heard of from a case that didn't get any press would be at issue during confirmation hearings? More importantly, how would his answer have mollified the interviewers? Supposing Epstein actually was an intelligence asset, and Acosta was asked about the deal during his confirmation, was he supposed to have made this public? Did the interviewers ask him more questions about it, or just leave it at that? Nothing can really be gleaned from this.

But even worse is that your narrative is incomplete. Epstein was initially investigated by local authorities, but the case stalled when it got to the DA's office. Prosecutors initially wanted to offer him a deal where he'd get five years probation. Then they decided to indict him on a single felony count of solicitation of prostitution. At this point it's worth pausing to look at the accusations as they stood at the time, since they all followed a similar fact pattern. Girls already in his employ would recruit other girls with the promise of quick cash if they were willing to give a rich guy a massage. He'd ask them to strip to their underwear and they'd massage him while he was naked. At some point he'd start jerking off and ask the girls to lower their panties while he fondled them with a vibrator, though this didn't happen with every girl. Then he'd pay them about $200. All the girls claimed to be eighteen (this isn't relevant legally, but it can influence a jury). Some of the girls came back multiple times, and there was no evidence that there was any coercion or forcible abuse.

Was the Palm Beach County DA reluctant to prosecute because they got a call from Washington informing them that Epstein was involved in intelligence? The explanation they gave to the police was that it was actually a difficult case to prosecute, and as a lawyer, I can see where they're coming from. Epstein's attorneys hired investigators to dig up dirt on the accusers, most (or all) of whom came from poor families and had had rough lives. Social media profiles showed drug and alcohol use and contained provocative comments about their bodies and sexual prowess. Some of the girls had minor criminal convictions. The prosecution's case would have rested almost entirely on the testimony of these girls. The reports they gave to police may have been compelling, but how would they react as witnesses? How would they deal with having to recount sexual abuse in open court? Would their stories be consistent with what they told police? How would they hold up under cross examination? Would the jury see them as victims, or as juvenile delinquent prostitutes who lied about their age and kept coming back to get more money? The chief of police was enraged, and turned the case over to the FBI.

This presents an interesting conundrum for someone who thinks Epstein was treated with kid gloves because he was some kind of intelligence asset. If the DA in Florida was willing to offer Epstein an even better deal because of it, then the Powers That Be were obviously tipped off to the investigation, so why bother letting the FBI spend a year on it? Why not just tell them to knock it off and say it's a state matter? After the Feds started investigating, Acosta had the same problems as the Florida DA with one additional one: Jurisdiction. The Feds could only prosecute cases that involved crossing state lines, and most of the Florida victims never left Palm Beach County. The pool was much shallower, and the victims who were left were among the repeat customers who had the biggest credibility problems. Acosta nonetheless hit harder than the DA in Florida had, indicting him on a charge that carried a ten year sentence. But the problems with the case didn't go away, and Dershowitz and Ken Starr made it clear that they intended to take the case to the mat, beginning with a jurisdictional challenge.

It's worth pointing out here that US Attorneys in general don't bring criminal cases unless they're practically guaranteed. Local DAs are often willing to roll the dice, but on the Federal side they expect the case to be airtight. Alexa Acosta was still in his 30s at this point and had previously handled civil rights cases and employment discrimination cases. I'm speculating here, but I don't think he'd want to deal with the humiliation of going after a high-profile target and whiffing. So he dealt Epstein. It was a sweetheart deal, but there was still jail time involved, and he still had to register as a sex offender, and those are usually the two biggest hurdles a prosecutor has when dealing out these kinds of cases. The case hadn't seen much press at this point, so there was no public clamor for him to proceed.

None of the stuff about powerful people potentially being involved came out until years later, when Virginia Giuffre et al. started filing lawsuits. None of the girls questioned in the initial investigation claimed to have serviced anyone other than Epstein; it doesn't look like there were any guests at the house at all, just staff and the girls. Gilsaine Maxwell doesn't even appear. I'm not trying to excuse Alex Acosta or the Florida DA or anyone else involved in slapping Epstein on the wrist here; they had a duty to prosecute these crimes, and they failed at it. But I understand where they were coming from, and I think that explanation makes more sense than that Epstein was a secret intelligence asset who would blow the whole operation if he didn't get what he wanted. It's easy to claim otherwise when what we know now gets conflated with what was known by prosecutors at the time. By 2019, the pubic had learned about what had happened and was appalled, and the US Attorney in New York had the political capital to go out on a limb. The national mood had also changed in the previous decade, and juries would be much more sensitive to a troubled teen taken advantage of by a rich pervert, and more sympathetic to a witness with a troubled past. The victims, too, would be adults now, and in better position to testify.

If Epstein was running a whorehouse, the guy who knows more about this than probably anyone else doesn't seem to think so. Bradley Edwards has represented over 200 alleged victims, and he said that the Epstein was both the pimp and the john. He said that a few of the girls may have serviced a few of Epstein's friends at some point, but for the most part he kept that part of his life hidden from those he interacted with.

3

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

When I took the bar exam I was curious about the whole proctor situation. I mean, who takes a job that works four days a year? They were all elderly and obviously retired, but I thought that maybe they worked for some kind of proctor service where they would occasionally work whatever exam needed proctoring. But then I asked one of them and nope, they worked two days in February and two in July. I then talked to the guy who was reading all the instructions and looked to be in charge, thinking that he might be a professional, but no, he got the job after someone saw him in a community theater production and thought he had a good speaking voice.

So for the New York thing, I do remember them talking about what would happen in case of an emergency, but it was more like a fire or something else that would cause the building to be evacuated, and they emphasized that that had never happened (I guess they'll have to change that language now). I can't remember if they said anything about medical emergencies, but they did emphasize that the test would not stop for any reason. A friend from law school whom I took the test with (in February, the day after a snowstorm) said that because the MBE is published only twice a year all states have to administer it on the same day to prevent the answers from getting out. Even beyond that, there are logistics concerns that make it really inconvenient to postpone anything, and there's a need to reassure students who have been stressing out about the test for months that things aren't going to be delayed and the test will proceed as normal regardless of what happens.

So you have proctors who are given very strict instructions, with no one from the Board of Bar Examiners present with the authority to grant exceptions, and you get situations like this. It seems like the proctors weren't given adequate training in how to respond and they doggedly stuck to the rules. To be fair, I don't know if yelling was the best response on the part of the students; I think a more appropriate instruction would be to quietly inform a proctor, with the main guy making a general announcement that there has been a medical emergency and EMS has been called. It said in the Reddit comments that Connecticut and Florida kept EMS on hand to deal with these situations, which seems like a good idea. Also, there was some mention of students deliberately not helping because they were worried about the test. Fuck that, if someone is going to die, having to retake it in six months isn't the end of the world.

While we're on the subject of bar exams, I had an idea when I took it called the Mount Everest of Lays. There may be more difficult situations to get laid in, but I haven't though of one that has the same combination of a necessarily limited time frame, situational inappropriateness (without being too inappropriate), and theoretical availability of women. The idea is getting laid on the evening between the two days of the bar exam with someone you met at the bar exam. The strategy would be to finish early, then hang around the room where they let you keep your stuff, waiting for an attractive member of the opposite sex to come in. You'd have an instant entree for conversing with a stranger, seeing as you both finished early. Then you'd see if she wants to go to lunch, or grab a drink, depending on whether it's the morning or afternoon session. Lunch would be ideal, because it's low-commitment and would allow you to establish a rapport before you asked her out for drinks later. Either way, after the first day of the exam you ask her for dinner and/or drinks and try to make your move.

It goes without saying that most people are incredibly stressed by the bar exam and invest a lot of time into studying for it. But it's also true that pretty much anyone who knows about prepping for it will tell you that you're better off not studying the night before the test, because after studying for two months you need to relax and not get too stressed. You can use this to your advantage since she might not have anyone in town to hang out with and distract her, and you can press the fact that she needs to relax all the way into bed. I will concede that this is an exceptionally low-probability play, but the theoretical framework is there. When I took the bar exam I finished early both sessions but didn't get the opportunity to hit on anyone. That's how I imagine it would go for most people.

Another fun bar exam story: One of the guys I was sitting next to was a little older and obviously neurotic. The rules specify what you're allowed to bring in with you and he had exactly everything you're allowed to bring in with you, including a plastic baggie filled with Certs or something like that. I rightly assumed that this guy was a bit more anxious than the average test-taker. Shortly into the exam, he consumed one of the Certs by biting it in half. I chuckled at the thought of quietly asking him to knock it off since it was keeping me from focusing on the test, which was guaranteed to make this guy feel somewhat ashamed for his minor breach of etiquette. A few minutes later, I noticed something else.

The Pennsylvania Bar Exam includes a practical component where you're given materials and asked to draft something—a brief, a motion, etc.—based on them. Every test prep service says that component should not be started until all the essay questions are complete, as it's really easy to get lost in the project and use up an inordinate amount of time. I glanced in his direction shortly after the test started and noticed that he immediately started on the practical section. Uh oh. I glance over again periodically to see where he's at with it. Every time he was still working on it. An hour in and he's still working on it. Two hours in and he's still working on it. Finally, with like 45 minutes to go, he finally starts on the first of three essay questions. I finish about ten minutes early and leave. As I'm walking to lunch, I break out laughing at the prospect of having stayed until the end to see how he finished. As I left he was frantically scribbling the beginning of the last essay. I wondered how he'd react if I had said "Man, you started the practical part first. BIG MISTAKE! You're gonna fail, dude.

I mean, seriously, how could a guy who is this neurotic not know that you save the practical part until last. Even starting it first, how could he be that oblivious to time management? Either way, had I actually said that, and made the earlier remark about the Certs, I probably would have put this guy on full tilt for the rest of the exam, and would have risked him having a heart attack and I probably would have failed myself after taking the time to render aid. Then again, for all I know he's been repeatedly failing the bar for the past fifteen years because he still hasn't figured out that you don't do the practical part first, and I could have tipped him off early and saved him a ton of trouble. Then again, the opportunity to get laid, how ever infinitesimal the chance, is worth more than causing unnecessary anxiety for laughs.

9

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

Sorry, I didn't answer the Prigozhin analogy because it directly implies the whole fever swamp idea that this was directed by people in high levels of government. But since you asked, I don't think it's really a relevant analogy. The first issue is that you're comparing the actions of an authoritarian dictatorship to those of a liberal democracy. If incontrovertible evidence came out that Putin had Prigozhin, such as the meticulous documentation you suggest, what do you think the repercussions would be for Putin? How would they compare with the repercussion faced by an American president facing similar allegations and similar evidence?

Which brings me to my second point: The allegations aren't similar. Prigozhin launched a rebellion against the Russian army during the middle of a war. This is not controversial. Alexei Navalny was the leader of an opposition party critical of the ruling regime. This is not controversial. For every person whom Putin or whoever has assassinated or attempted to assassinate there has been a clear, uncontested motive. It wasn't based on the "theory" that Prigozin was secretly the head of Wagner. Your proposed motive is based on a theory that Epstein was an "intelligence honeypot" for some organization, most likely Mossad but you've mentioned the CIA a few times so who knows. Whoever it was, the working theory appears to be that Epstein was used to procure young girls for sex with powerful men, who could then be blackmailed into making important decisions that would benefit the blackmailers.

If we examine this theory from the standpoint of it making any practical sense based on the known facts, it quickly falls apart. The first problem I have is that it muddies the water insofar as the motive is concerned. In the wake of Epstein's death, the gist of the dominant theory was that he had dirt on powerful people and was killed in an effort to prevent this dirt from coming to light. Now that intelligence agencies have been added to the mix, it's unclear to me if the theory is that the intelligence agencies had him killed to protect the powerful men who were being blackmailed, or if he was killed so he wouldn't reveal the existence of the honeypot scheme.

Either way, the whole scheme was a curious one, in that it evidently didn't target anyone in power, and seemed to serve Epstein more than any of the alleged targets. Of all the girls who have made allegations against Epstein, only a few of them claim they were abused by anyone other than Epstein or Maxwell. And the people who have been named don't exactly comprise a who's who of people you would want in your pocket. Bill Clinton (no allegations were made against Clinton but his name comes up so I'm including him) didn't become involved with Epstein until after he was president, and at a time when the opposition party was in power, which party had just tried to destroy him for sexual improprieties a few years prior. I don't know what kind of influence Clinton was supposed to have had on the US government at the time, except that he might be able to convince Hillary to vote a certain way. Trump was a real estate developer who was famous for being famous but didn't have any political aspirations beyond an aborted bid at the Reform Party nomination in 2000. Alan Dershowitz was a Harvard law professor, talking head, and occasional appellate litigator. I don't know what he could have done for anyone who wasn't facing a complicated criminal appeal. Prince Andrew was the brother of the heir apparent to a ceremonial monarchy. George Mitchell was a former senator and was out of politics. Some guy owned a hotel chain. I don't know what blackmailing Bill Gates gets you other than cash. Steven Hawking? A French talent agent? The only person named who had any actual political power was Bill Richardson, and the governor of New Mexico isn't exactly high on the totem pole. And however useless these people were in the early 2000s when they were supposedly being blackmailed, they were even more useless in 2019, when Trump was the only one on the list with any contemporary relevance.

1

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

The thing that pisses me off the most about these Epstein conspiracy theories is that seemingly none of the people putting them forth have bothered to read the Inspector General's report of the investigation into his death. Hence, these people, yourself included, cite the "official explanation" without knowing what the official explanation even is, and go off half-cocked on theories of how Epstein could have been murdered that contradict the most basic facts of the case. To wit:

come on how hard is it to strange someone and wrap some cloth around him afterwards. Are you going to say that it would leave evidence of murder? The evidence was literally already examined by a pathologist claiming it's more indicative of murder, and summarily ignored.

The pathologist you're referring to is Dr. Michael Baden, who said specifically that Epstein suffered a hyoid bone fracture which is more indicative of manual strangulation, and that he'd never seen such a fracture occur in a case of suicide by hanging. Dr. Baden's personal experience aside, it is well-documented in the medical literature that such a fracture indeed does occur in a minority of hangings, particularly among older people. In any event, Dr. Baden didn't bother to address any of the other findings from the autopsy that indicate a hanging: The fractures in the other neck bones, the ligature pattern, the petechial hemorrhage, the plethora, the lack of lung muscle hemorrhage, and the lack of defensive wounds. None of these were consistent with manual strangulation.

Faking a hanging so that it fools a medical examiner isn't simply a matter of strangling the guy and wrapping a cloth around his neck afterwards. You have cause a number of specific injuries while not causing a number of other specific injuries, some of which won't manifest until time of autopsy. And, as far as Epstein is concerned, the murder would have had to accomplish this without Epstein fighting back at all.

The rest of your post just wanders back into the fever swamps where we go from Epstein being murdered by two compromised prison employees to there being an entire systemic effort to get rid of him involving practically everyone in the Department of Justice, plus various state and local officials as well, at which point I don't know what to tell you. Actually, I do know what to tell you: If you want to go on with this, read the report. The whole 120 pages. Tell me what you think is accurate and what information you had that the IG's office didn't bother considering. Then we at least have a basis for conversation.

4

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

As I said in another comment, and would be blindingly obvious if you had read the official report, Epstein wasn't in the general population. He had limited contact with other prisoners. Furthermore, this was more of a jail than a prison, with people moving in and out regularly. Epstein was intentionally segregated from other prisoners for the explicit purpose of protection; this theory doesn't comport with the known facts.

0

Context

Rov_Scam 5mo ago

Epstein wasn't in general population. He didn't have a cellmate at the time. No other inmates had any access to him unless a guard let him out of his cell and into Epstein's, which we know didn't happen because there's nothing on tape showing that anyone went in the direction of Epstein's cell all night. Unless it's your contention that during the missing three minutes a guard went up the stairs, let one preselected prisoner out of his cell and into Epstein's, waited while the prisoner murdered Epstein and fashioned a noose from bedsheets, then let the prisoner back into his cell and walked downstairs, and somehow everyone who had access to the tape from the Electronics Technician on up the chain was also bought off or intimidated. That behavior goes beyond looking the other way for a few minutes and tends towards being an active participant liable to be indicted for a capital crime.

I don't know what state you're in, but "quite a few" doesn't mean much considering how many COs are in the state. If you're in Vermont, with only 600 officers, even if one was getting caught every week, and there were just as many who didn't get caught, and all were susceptible to bribery, that still leaves at 5/6 chance that the guy you pick doesn't participate and goes to the police, which is more common if you're using intimidation as a tactic and there's nothing in it for the CO. Even in Vermont, someone would have to be getting caught nearly every other day for the odds to even get to 50/50. Remember, you can't just pick the most susceptible guard; you have to pick someone who actually has access to Epstein, and since they don't work alone you need at least two people. So even if half of the guards are compromised you still only have a 25% chance of your gambit not resulting in a lengthy prison sentence, or at least a very uncomfortable conversation with police whereby your powerful employer's cover is completely blown.

0

Context

What is this place?

Why are you called The Motte?

New post guidelines

Rules

Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats

Rov_Scam

Rov_Scam