Their precise relationships with Epstein, the girls he and his minions recruited, and his money-making remain unclear in many instances, which is a natural consequence of the slap-on-the-wrist plea deal for him that short-circuited disclosure in the courts.
Starr pleaded guilty in state court to two counts of soliciting a prostitute, with an agreement by prosecutors not to pursue others in general. However, a former house manager of Epstein's Florida mansion, Alfredo Rodriguez, received an 18-month sentence for trying to sell to the defense exclusive rights to an annotated list of Epstein's celebrity and sex contacts. Rodriguez, 60, died in December.
A week ago, the Daily Beast focused heavily on Starr's role in a column entitled, Conservative Scold Ken Starr Got A Billionaire Pedophile Off. Reporter M.S. Nestel described how Epstein faced life sentences if authorities pursued their heavy documentation that he had assaulted and exploited high school girls on a systematic basis. Instead, the billionaire was sentenced for a single state charge of soliciting a prostitution.
Epstein went to jail nights for 13 months in a special wing of a local jail, maintained his freedom during the day, and emerged in 2011 to scoff at his critics, as reported by the New York Post in Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein: I'm a sex offender, not a predator. The newspaper reported that imperious ex-con used his $50 million New York City mansion to celebrate his release from a Florida jail "with his close pal, Britain's Prince Andrew."
Starr is, of course, the former federal judge and the independent prosecutor whom fellow judge David Sentelle, a Federalist Society activist supervising the nation's independent counsels for 14 years, had appointed to replace a prior investigator of President Bill Clinton's Whitewater financial transactions.
Failing to find actionable evidence on Whitewater, Starr expanded his probe to sex scandal allegations after receiving a tip about a sexual activity by youthful Defense Department employee, Monica Lewinsky.
Under Starr in January 1998, federal authorities ambushed Lewinsky while she was shopping at a food court in January 1998, as she described in a 2014 Washington Post article, Lewinsky mistreated by authorities, that recalled her tears and panic while authorities held her during a 12-hour interrogation without a lawyer in a hotel room.
Agreeing finally to wear a wire to incriminate the president, Lewinsky helped Starr secure evidence that the president engaged in oral sex, leading to Clinton's false denials. The House then impeached Clinton before he saved his presidency by winning acquittal in the Senate.
The Epstein case is worth studying in part because of the high stakes for sex scandals and blackmail at such levels.
The Epstein scandal illustrates, yet again, a two-tiered American justice system where wealth and political influence can often win lenient treatment even in heinous, well-documented cases.
Furthermore, a Roberts claim that Epstein videotaped orgies and other sex events for blackmail and that authorities knew this raises additional concerns regarding the possibility of corrupt influence on major government and business decision-making.
The Guardian on Feb. 7 published Video exists of underage sex with powerful men, based on a new affidavit Roberts filed the previous day. Her claim that the FBI likely possesses video alleges the goal of blackmail.
The plaintiff filings claimed, "Epstein instructed Jane Doe #3 that she was to give the prince whatever he demanded and required Jane Doe #3 to report back to him on the details of the sexual abuse." Roberts claimed that Epstein's "'lending' of young girls to prominent international figures -- foreign presidents and U.S. politicians and businessmen among them -- was to 'ingratiate' himself and 'so that he could potentially blackmail them."
Roberts wrote also: "There were times when I was physically abused to the point that I remember fearfully thinking that I didn't know whether I was going to survive," Roberts said in a new court filing last week.
We have examined similar matters for years, including at OEN, and are convinced that government officials have a long history as do private players in such sex scandal pressures to affect government policy.
The gist is that the Epstein saga raises serious question about favoritism if not corruption in the courts even if plaintiffs' allegations may prove to be overblown, otherwise incredible, or legally inadmissible.
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