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Epstein involved girls younger than that, in greater quantity, with elements of coercion, going unpunished, and potentially for the purpose of blackmail on behalf of a foreign nation. These are not comparable events.
an upcoming guy from a rich family gets elected as Seminole County Tax Collector who then gets women off of Sugar Baby websites paying them >$70,000, prints them fraudulent Florida driver's licenses listing them as >18, and then pays them to have sex with him and others, including perhaps a sitting Congressmen
looks like this could potentially be a blackmail operation also (although perhaps not on behalf of a foreign nation), but the guy doing it also engaged in a bunch of other ridiculous criminal behavior which landed with him being arrested for something else which is when the above was uncovered
I think there was a blackmail element no?
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/leaked-texts-from-israeli-consular-official-show-more-details-in-gaetz-levinson-funding-scheme/
https://archive.is/5jZtH
Admittedly I never looked into this deeply. I also distinctly recall some other politician coming forward when the Gaetz drama dropped, saying that something similar happened to him: he met someone, they had girls in the back of the car who were overly friendly, and he left because of the strange vibe. But I don’t remember who that was.
As far as I know, there was no blackmail element from Joel Greenberg himself.
There was other nonconnected blackmailers, though: a former prosecutor for the northern district of Florida by the name of David McGee and a former Intelligence officer for the military named Bob Kent got together and likely attempted to blackmail Gaetz's father. The scheme was Don Gaetz would give $25,000,000 to McGee and who would allegedly use this money to attempt a rescue operation on a long-lost CIA contractor named Bob Levinson and in exchange the two would use their contacts in the Biden admin to get a presidential pardon for Matt Gaetz's "looming" federal sex trafficking charges (which up to that point were secret). Don Gaetz immediately went to the local FBI and they got him to wear a wire to meet with David McGee. Luckily for the Gaetz family, Don refused to do anything without a written letter from the FBI detailing the purpose of the meeting, their agreement, and their cooperation.
Once the Gaetz family had that letter and went to the meeting with David McGee, shortly afterwards someone leaked the entire sex trafficking investigation to the NYT which led to Matt Gaetz giving one of the most bizarre television interviews ever. I also remember this causing a bit of a fallout with other politicians commenting, but I also don't remember who that was.
It looks like your links don't list Bob Levinson as a CIA contractor, but I believe his ties to the CIA (and maybe others) were leaked to the press in ~2013 in an attempt to pressure the Obama admin to get him back.
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The main Epstein scandal involved girls who were 16-17, most famously Giuffre. Maxwell was recruiting high school girls. There were allegations about girls who were younger than 15 but much less evidence behind them, which is not, of course, to say it didn’t happen.
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