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mick silver
16th February 2016, 06:50 AM
Victims of Billionaire Pedophile with Ties to Bill Clinton Claim Federal Prosecutors Offered “Sweetheart Deal”Source: Michael Krieger, Liberty Blitzkrieg (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/02/15/victims-of-billionaire-pedophile-with-ties-to-bill-clinton-claim-federal-prosecutors-offered-sweetheart-deal/)

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Prosecutors went to great lengths to keep secret the non-prosecution agreement reached in 2007 with Jeffrey Epstein, attorneys for the victims allege, “because of the strong objection they would have faced from victims of Epstein’s abuse, and because of the public criticism that would have resulted from allowing a politically-connected billionaire who had sexually abused more than 30 minor girls to escape … with only a county court jail sentence.”
Before any allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced in 2005, Trump and Bill Clinton spoke glowingly of Epstein, and court records have included documents and testimony suggesting both men flew with Epstein on his private jets.
Court files document long-running ties between Epstein and the former president. Bill Clinton flew on at least six trips with Epstein and his entourage in 2002 and 2003 including to international destinations such as Paris, Bangkok and Brunei, according to logs kept by one of Epstein’s pilots.
And as Epstein first faced federal prosecution a few years later, one of his lawyers, Gerald B. Lefcourt, wrote to prosecutors to tout Epstein’s pedigree as “part of the original group that conceived of the Clinton Global Initiative,” according to a letter attached to Wednesday’s court filing.
At the heart of this week’s court filings is a deal Epstein reached with federal prosecutors in September of 2007 that spared him from a federal prosecution. After an extensive investigation by the Palm Beach police and the FBI, the Justice Department effectively immunized Epstein for multiple alleged offenses involving underage girls in exchange for his guilty pleas to two comparatively minor sex crimes in Florida state court. And Epstein’s lawyers persuaded the federal government to keep the terms of the agreement secret, according to the court filing by victims’ attorneys Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell.
On the day the deal was signed, an attorney for Epstein sent an email to the federal prosecutor handling the case which read, “Please do whatever you can to keep this from becoming public,” according to an email exchange attached to Wednesday’s filing.
If he’d been charged and convicted on the federal counts, Epstein might have spent the rest of his life in prison. Instead, he now splits his time between his permanent residence – a private island estate off the coast of St. Thomas – and homes in Paris, New Mexico and New York City, where he owns what is purported to be one of the largest single-family residences in Manhattan.
– From the ABC News article: Victims: Feds Hid ‘Sweetheart’ Deal for Sex Offender With Deep Political Ties (http://abcnews.go.com/US/victims-feds-hid-sweetheart-deal-sex-offender-deep/story?id=36843144)
As I’ve said time and time again, the greatest cancer of all cancers afflicting these United States is a startling deterioration in the rule of law. Specifically, the institutionalization of a two-tier justice system in which the rich and powerful can (literally) get away with murder, while poor inner-city kids get locked up for “victimless” crimes.
One of the most egregious examples of our Banana Republic criminal justice system relates to billionaire pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. A man who was barely punished for sexually abusing and exploiting at least 30 underage children.
This is a topic I touched upon a little over a year ago in the post, Oligarch Justice – Powerful Pedophiles Roam Free as Journalist Barrett Brown Returns to Jail (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/01/22/oligarch-justice-powerful-pedophiles-roam-free-as-barrett-brown-returns-to-jail/). Here are a few excerpts:

Bill Clinton took repeated trips on the “Lolita Express (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/prince-andrew-allegation-first-pictures-4925112)“—the private passenger jet owned by billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein—with an actress in softcore porn movies whose name appears in Epstein’s address book under an entry for “massages,” according to flight logbooks obtained by Gawker and published today for the first time (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1507315-epstein-flight-manifests.html). The logs also show that Clinton shared more than a dozen flights with a woman who federal prosecutors believe procured underage girls to sexually service Epstein and his friends and acted as a “potential co-conspirator” in his crimes.
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 (http://gawker.com/305599/jail-bound-ken-starr-cant-get-jeffrey-epstein-off) in Florida to one count of soliciting underage girls for sex (and one count of adult solicitation), for which he served just over a year in county jail. But sprawling local, state, and federal investigations into the eccentric investor’s habit of paying teen girls for “massages”—sessions during which he would allegedly penetrate girls with sex toys, demand to be masturbated, and have intercourse—turned up a massive network of victims, including 35 female minors whom federal prosecutors believed he’d sexually abused. He has reportedly settled lawsuits from more than 30 “Jane Doe” victims since 2008; the youngest alleged victim was 12 years old at the time of her abuse.
Some of his victims are understandably furious regarding Epstein’s joke of a punishment, and in new court filings claim that prosecutors secretly negotiated a sweetheart deal to save the politically connected pedophile.
We learn the following from ABC News (http://abcnews.go.com/US/victims-feds-hid-sweetheart-deal-sex-offender-deep/story?id=36843144):

New court filings are bringing fresh attention to a Florida sex scandal that could become grist for political trouble in the 2016 Presidential campaign.
The new legal filings allege that federal prosecutors in Florida “repeatedly” and “intentionally” violated the rights of dozens of teenage sex abuse victims by secretly negotiating an “extraordinarily lenient” deal with a wealthy Palm Beach financier known in the past to have socialized with powerful business and political figures — including former President Bill Clinton (http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/us/bill-clinton.htm) and current GOP front-runner Donald Trump (http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/donald-trump.htm).
Prosecutors went to great lengths to keep secret the non-prosecution agreement reached in 2007 with Jeffrey Epstein (http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/jeffrey-epstein-sex-offender.htm), attorneys for the victims allege, “because of the strong objection they would have faced from victims of Epstein’s abuse, and because of the public criticism that would have resulted from allowing a politically-connected billionaire who had sexually abused more than 30 minor girls to escape … with only a county court jail sentence.”
Throughout the negotiations — and for nearly a year after the agreement was signed — the victims were kept in the dark, their attorneys said, strung along as government lawyers promised victims they were still investigating even long after they had cut Epstein an “indulgent” deal.
But with his victims back in court to challenge the government’s handling of the case, there is new attention on Epstein’s ties to two men who find themselves facing the glare of a presidential campaign — Bill Clinton, husband of Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, and Trump, who is currently leading the GOP primary race.
Before any allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced in 2005, Trump and Bill Clinton spoke glowingly of Epstein, and court records have included documents and testimony suggesting both men flew with Epstein on his private jets.
Court files document long-running ties between Epstein and the former president. Bill Clinton flew on at least six trips with Epstein and his entourage in 2002 and 2003 including to international destinations such as Paris, Bangkok and Brunei, according to logs kept by one of Epstein’s pilots.
And as Epstein first faced federal prosecution a few years later, one of his lawyers, Gerald B. Lefcourt, wrote to prosecutors to tout Epstein’s pedigree as “part of the original group that conceived of the Clinton Global Initiative (http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/us/clinton-global-initiative.htm),” according to a letter attached to Wednesday’s court filing.
Reached Wednesday, Lefcourt said he would not have made that representation to the prosecutors had he not believed it was true. Representatives for both the Clinton Global Initiative and the former President did not immediately respond to ABC News’ requests for comment. According to the organization’s website, CGI was formed in 2005 by former President Clinton “after a lifetime of attending meetings where issues were discussed but no action was taken.”
Whether Trump invokes the scandal in an attempt to spur questions about Clinton’s association with Epstein may depend on his own history with the wealthy investor. In a New York Magazine article in 2002, Trump boasted of his friendship with Epstein: “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy.”
“He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life,” he told the magazine.
At the heart of this week’s court filings is a deal Epstein reached with federal prosecutors in September of 2007 that spared him from a federal prosecution. After an extensive investigation by the Palm Beach police and the FBI, the Justice Department effectively immunized Epstein for multiple alleged offenses involving underage girls in exchange for his guilty pleas to two comparatively minor sex crimes in Florida state court. And Epstein’s lawyers persuaded the federal government to keep the terms of the agreement secret, according to the court filing by victims’ attorneys Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell.
On the day the deal was signed, an attorney for Epstein sent an email to the federal prosecutor handling the case which read, “Please do whatever you can to keep this from becoming public,” according to an email exchange attached to Wednesday’s filing.
Read those two paragraphs over and over and over again. This is Banana Republic justice.

Hundreds of pages of newly-disclosed correspondence between federal prosecutors and Epstein’s dream team of defense lawyers, including Jay Lefkowitz, Kenneth Starr, Alan Dershowitz, Roy Black, and Lefcourt, provide an inside look at Epstein’s efforts to forestall the federal prosecution and at the effort to conceal the resulting deal, despite repeated acknowledgements by government lawyers that they were legally required to inform the victims.
Disturbingly, Alan Dershowitz also had personal ties to Epstein. See the following from the post, Oligarch Justice – Powerful Pedophiles Roam Free as Journalist Barrett Brown Returns to Jail (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/01/22/oligarch-justice-powerful-pedophiles-roam-free-as-barrett-brown-returns-to-jail/):

Epstein’s predatory past, and his now-inconvenient relationships with a Who’s Who of the Davos set, hit the front pages again earlier this month (http://gawker.com/report-underage-girl-was-paid-15-000-to-have-sex-with-1677370579) when one of his victims, Virginia Roberts, claimed in a federal court filing that Epstein recruited her as a “sex slave” at the age of 15 and “sexually trafficked [her] to politically-connected and financially-powerful people,” including Prince Andrew and attorney Alan Dershowitz. (The latter, the filing claimed, had sex with the victim “on private planes”; Dershowitz vigorously denies the charges, as does Prince Andrew.)
Other prominent figures whose names appear in the logs, which document globe-spanning flights on Epstein’s planes during various periods from 1997 to 2005, include Dershowitz, former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president Larry Summers, Naomi Campbell, and scientist Stephen Pinker.
The logs also cast doubt on public statements made by Dershowitz, who has been vigorously downplaying his relationship with Epstein since Roberts levied her accusations against him. Dershowitz has attempted to paint himself as a mere passing acquaintance of Epstein, suggesting to the American Lawyer last week (http://www.americanlawyer.com/id=1202715316005/Prof-Dershowitz-Tell-Me-How-You-Really-Feel) that he only began hanging around the billionaire to fundraise for his school, Harvard.
Now back to the ABC News story…

“In a feature article about Mr. Epstein in New York Magazine,” Lefcourt wrote in a letter to prosecutors, “former President Clinton aptly described Mr. Epstein as ‘a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first century science.’ President Clinton reached this conclusion during a month-long trip to Africa with Mr. Epstein, which Mr. Epstein hosted. The purpose of that trip was to increase AIDS awareness; to work towards a solution to the AIDS crisis; and to provide funding to reduce the costs of delivering medications to those inflicted (sic) with the disease.”
Epstein entered his guilty pleas in June of 2008 to one count of solicitation of a prostitute and one count of solicitation of a prostitute who is a minor. He served 13 months in a private wing of the Palm Beach County stockade with liberal work-release privileges that allowed him to spend up to sixteen hours a day at his office. He is also required to register as a sex offender in any state where he has a home.
If he’d been charged and convicted on the federal counts, Epstein might have spent the rest of his life in prison. Instead, he now splits his time between his permanent residence – a private island estate off the coast of St. Thomas – and homes in Paris, New Mexico and New York City, where he owns what is purported to be one of the largest single-family residences in Manhattan.
Two of Epstein’s alleged victims, then 14-year-old girls now identified in court documents as Jane Does 1 and 2, filed suit in 2008 accusing the government of violating the federal law which guarantees crime victims the right to confer with prosecutors and to be treated fairly by the justice system. Wednesday’s filing in the case seeks a ruling from the judge that their rights – and those of all the alleged Epstein victims identified in the federal investigation – were indeed violated by the government. Their ultimate goal is the invalidation of Epstein’s “sweetheart plea deal.”
“Despite the fact that this case has been in litigation for more than seven years spanning several hundred pleadings,” write the victims’ attorneys, “the Government does not write even a single sentence explaining why it entered into [a deal] with a sex offender who had committed hundreds of federal sex offenses against young girls.Perhaps there is some reason for this extraordinary leniency. But if so, the Government has yet to offer it.”
I’ll let readers come to their own conclusions.
For related articles, see:
Oligarch Justice – Powerful Pedophiles Roam Free as Journalist Barrett Brown Returns to Jail (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/01/22/oligarch-justice-powerful-pedophiles-roam-free-as-barrett-brown-returns-to-jail/)
Elizabeth Warren Releases Blistering Report on Corporate Criminality – Singles Out SEC Uselessness (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/01/29/elizabeth-warren-releases-blistering-report-on-corporate-criminality-singles-out-sec-uselessness/)
Shots Fired – Jamie Dimon Questions Elizabeth Warren’s “Understanding of the Global Banking System” (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/06/10/shots-fired-jamie-dimon-questions-elizabeth-warrens-understanding-of-the-global-banking-system/)
Four “Too Big to Fail/Jail” Banks Threaten to Hold Back Funds to Democrats Over Elizabeth Warren (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/03/30/four-too-big-to-failjail-banks-threaten-to-hold-back-funds-to-democrats-over-elizabeth-warren/)
Video of the Day – Elizabeth Warren Torches Janet Yellen on TBTF (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/07/16/video-of-the-day-elizabeth-warren-torches-janet-yellen-on-tbtf/)
Stunning Quote – Larry Summers to Elizabeth Warren in 2009: “Insiders Don’t Criticize Other Insiders” (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/04/29/stunning-quote-larry-summers-to-elizabeth-warren-in-2009-insiders-dont-criticize-other-insiders/)
Elizabeth Warren Confronts Eric Holder, Ben Bernanke and Mary Jo White on Bankster Immunity (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/05/15/elizabeth-warren-confronts-eric-holder-ben-bernanke-and-mary-jo-white-on-bankster-immunity/)
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger


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mick silver
16th February 2016, 06:55 AM
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1507315-epstein-flight-manifests.html

mick silver
16th February 2016, 06:57 AM
Report: Underage Girl Was Paid $15,000 to Have Sex with Prince Andrew (http://gawker.com/report-underage-girl-was-paid-15-000-to-have-sex-with-1677370579)

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--SMRbdsKw--/c_fill,fl_progressive,g_center,h_80,q_80,w_80/brxhw6jspbq9c6bwlnhp.jpg (http://kinja.com/brendanoconnor)
Brendan O'Connor (http://kinja.com/brendanoconnor)
1/04/15 1:05pm (http://gawker.com/report-underage-girl-was-paid-15-000-to-have-sex-with-1677370579)Filed to: prince Andrew (http://gawker.com/tag/prince-andrew)






http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--dnr81hYd--/onbt0vtnmf1bb88k86lq.jpg

The Daily Mail has interviewed one of the litigants (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2895735/The-account-masseuse-centre-explosive-Prince-Andrew-sex-slave-drama-telling-truth.html) in a Florida lawsuit against the prosecutors of investment banker and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who she says provided her to Prince Andrew, Duke of York, as a sex slave. The woman, Virginia Roberts, 30, was underage at the time.
The Mail reportedly spoke to Roberts about her experience working for Epstein a year ago, but the paper was not able to publish the account until now. Roberts says she was introduced to Epstein by Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of disgraced media mogul Robert Maxwell. (In 1991, Robert Maxwell was found dead in the sea (http://www.theguardian.com/fromthearchive/story/0,,1078193,00.html) after going missing from his yacht, 3 billion pounds in debt.)http://gawker.com/lawsuit-prince... (http://gawker.com/lawsuit-prince-andrew-had-teen-sex-slave-provided-by-a-1677098826)
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--aS5YbWkF--/c_fill,fl_progressive,g_center,h_77,q_80,w_137/t3s8a671dnd72xhtd3uu.jpg (http://gawker.com/lawsuit-prince-andrew-had-teen-sex-slave-provided-by-a-1677098826)
Lawsuit: Prince Andrew Had Teen Sex-Slave Provided by a Florida Banker (http://gawker.com/lawsuit-prince-andrew-had-teen-sex-slave-provided-by-a-1677098826) Lawsuit: Prince Andrew Had Teen Sex-Slave Provided by a Florida Banker (http://gawker.com/lawsuit-prince-andrew-had-teen-sex-slave-provided-by-a-1677098826) Lawsuit: Prince Andrew Had Teen Sex-Slave Provided (http://gawker.com/lawsuit-prince-andrew-had-teen-sex-slave-provided-by-a-1677098826)

Prince Andrew, Duke of York, second oldest son of the queen of Great Britain, has been accused of…Read more Read more (http://gawker.com/lawsuit-prince-andrew-had-teen-sex-slave-provided-by-a-1677098826)


Ghislaine Maxwell, Roberts alleges, worked as Epstein's madame. "She said she worked for a very wealthy gentleman called Jeffrey Epstein who was looking for a traveling masseuse and I'd get training and be paid large amounts of money," Roberts told the (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2895735/The-account-masseuse-centre-explosive-Prince-Andrew-sex-slave-drama-telling-truth.html)Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2895735/The-account-masseuse-centre-explosive-Prince-Andrew-sex-slave-drama-telling-truth.html).
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"Jeffrey said he wanted to be my mentor," says Miss Roberts. "I felt that he and Ghislaine really cared for me. We'd do family things, like watch Sex And The City and eat popcorn.
"But it was a sick family. I was a paedophile's top girl, being trained up for a British Prince. He trained me to do whatever a man wanted. I was worried, but I would do anything to keep Jeffrey happy and keep my place as his No 1 girl."

The New York Post reported in 2011 that Epstein and Prince Andrew celebrated the registered sex offender's release from jail with a party (http://nypost.com/2011/02/25/billionaire-jeffrey-epstein-im-a-sex-offender-not-a-predator/) at his $50 million East 71st Street mansion. Epstein plead guilty in 2008 (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/who-is-jeffrey-epstein-a-study-of-the-man-linked-to-worlds-of-celebrity-politics--and-royalty-9954397.html) to a single charge of soliciting prostitution. He served 13 months in jail.
Roberts alleges that she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew three times, the first during a visit to London. "Andrew was making eye contact with me at every chance and concentrating on my plunging V-neck top," she told the (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2895735/The-account-masseuse-centre-explosive-Prince-Andrew-sex-slave-drama-telling-truth.html)Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2895735/The-account-masseuse-centre-explosive-Prince-Andrew-sex-slave-drama-telling-truth.html). "He didn't ask me anything about myself. I just sat there with a smile frozen on my lips. Ghislaine had whispered, 'The Prince seems really interested in you.'"
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Roberts claims that Epstein paid her about $15,000 for sleeping with the Prince, the Mail reports (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2895735/The-account-masseuse-centre-explosive-Prince-Andrew-sex-slave-drama-telling-truth.html). Also: "There is no suggestion that the Prince knew that Epstein paid her."
The second time she was coerced into having sex with the prince was at Epstein's Manhattan apartment, Roberts claims (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2895735/The-account-masseuse-centre-explosive-Prince-Andrew-sex-slave-drama-telling-truth.html); the third alleged time was on Epstein's Caribbean island, where a group of Russian models were flown in for an orgy.
Buckingham Palace has "emphatically denied (http://bigstory.ap.org/article/9f9d30baa04640368bbd4813b7570d40/palace-sex-claims-against-prince-andrew-false)" the accusations, the Associated Press reports. Prince Andrew, meanwhile, has had to cut his ski vacation short to tell his mother (Queen Elizabeth II) that he did not have sex (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2896075/Prince-Andrew-flies-skiing-holiday-tell-Queen-s-innocent-underage-sex-allegations-does-immunity-deal-government.html) with underage girls, the Mail reports.
"I'm not going to be bullied back into silence," she said in a statement (http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/02/prince-andrew-named-us-lawsuit-underage-sex-allegations) provided to The Guardian by her lawyers. "I am going to name every guy who deserves to be named when I go to court," she told the Mail.
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[Photo credit: AP Images

mick silver
16th February 2016, 06:59 AM
Elizabeth Warren Releases Blistering Report on Corporate Criminality – Singles Out SEC UselessnessMichael Krieger (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/author/mkriegs/) | Posted Friday Jan 29, 2016 at 10:34 am 10 Comments (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/01/29/elizabeth-warren-releases-blistering-report-on-corporate-criminality-singles-out-sec-uselessness/#comments)
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I was really disappointed by Elizabeth Warren’s recent vote against auditing the Federal Reserve, but I’ve decided to forgive her following the release of an extremely powerful and important 12-page report on corporate criminality titled: Rigged Justice: 2016 – How Weak Enforcement Lets Corporate Offenders Off Easy (http://www.warren.senate.gov/files/documents/Rigged_Justice_2016.pdf). In fact, this may be the most meaningful report I’ve read since Princeton and Northwestern published a study (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/04/16/new-report-from-princeton-and-northwestern-proves-it-the-u-s-is-an-oligarchy/) proving the U.S. is an oligarchy.
The report encapsulates the meaning of public service, and demonstrates what U.S. Senators could be doing if they weren’t busy constantly whoring themselves out to the highest bidder. The fact of the matter is if Congress was filled with more individuals with the smarts, ethics and courage of Elizabeth Warren, this country would not be in the mess it’s in.
I know many of you will see that statement as an exaggeration, but it’s not. As I’ve maintained time and time again, the single biggest issue destroying America, the one that towers above all others, is the diminishment of the rule of law. Specifically, the fact that rich and powerful players in this country have amassed so much economic and political control they have created an untouchable class for themselves which is completely above the law. The definition of this sort of political arrangement is tyranny. As I noted in the piece, New Report – The United States’ Sharp Drop in Economic Freedom Since 2000 Driven by “Decline in Rule of Law.” (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/10/13/new-report-the-united-states-sharp-drop-in-economic-freedom-since-2000-driven-by-decline-in-rule-of-law/)

In my opinion, the U.S. is living on borrowed time. The entrepreneurial spirit is still very much alive, and a lot of innovative things are happening in the tech area, but other than that, the U.S. economy looks very much like a third word oligarchy. From my perspective, we need to reinstate the rule of law at once. The bad actors amongst the rich and powerful will continue to feast relentlessly on the productive parts of the economy so long as they they are never held accountable for their crimes. Simply put: The rule of law must be restored immediately.
That is not an exaggeration. Nothing, I mean nothing, will get sustainably better in this nation until the criminals in charge are either jailed or their influence obliterated from the entire social and economic structure. Thankfully, Senator Elizabeth Warren sees this problem as the core cancer that it is. Don’t believe me? Read the opening paragraphs to her report (http://www.warren.senate.gov/files/documents/Rigged_Justice_2016.pdf):

Laws are effective only to the extent they are enforced. A law on the books has little impact if prosecution is highly unlikely.
This country devotes substantial resources to the prosecution of crimes such as murder, assault, kidnapping, burglary and theft, both in an effort to deter future criminal activity and to provide victims with some degree of justice. Strong enforcement of corporate criminal laws serves similar goals: to deter future criminal activity by making would-be lawbreakers think twice before breaking the law and, sometimes, by helping victims recover from their injuries.
When government regulators and prosecutors fail to pursue big corporations or their executives who violate the law, or when the government lets them off with a slap on the wrist, corporate criminals have free rein to operate outside the law. They can game the system, cheat families, rip off taxpayers, and even take actions that result in the death of innocent victims—all with no serious consequences.
The failure to punish big corporations or their executives when they break the law undermines the foundations of this great country: If justice means a prison sentence for a teenager who steals a car, but it means nothing more than a sideways glance at a CEO who quietly engineers the theft of billions of dollars, then the promise of equal justice under the law has turned into a lie. The failure to prosecute big, visible crimes has a corrosive effect on the fabric of democracy and our shared belief that we are all equal in the eyes of the law.
Under the current approach to enforcement, corporate criminals routinely escape meaningful prosecution for their misconduct. This is so despite the fact that the law is unambiguous: if a corporation has violated the law, individuals within the corporation must also have violated the law. If the corporation is subject to charges of wrongdoing, so are those in the corporation who planned, authorized or took the actions. But even in cases of flagrant corporate law breaking, federal law enforcement agencies – and particularly the Department of Justice (DOJ) – rarely seek prosecution of individuals. In fact, federal agencies rarely pursue convictions of either large corporations or their executives in a court of law. Instead, they agree to criminal and civil settlements with corporations that rarely require any admission of wrongdoing and they let the executives go free without any individual accountability.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is particularly feeble, often failing to use the full range of its enforcement toolbox. Not only does the agency fail to demand accountability, the SEC frequently uses its prosecutorial discretion to grant waivers to big companies so that those companies can continue to enjoy special privileges despite often-repeated misconduct that legally disqualifies them from receiving such benefits. Lax enforcement at other agencies, such as the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), stems primarily from a lack of important legal tools and persistent underfunding by Congress that often turn the legal rules into little more than suggestions that companies can freely ignore.
Of course, the uselessness of the SEC should not be surprising. The moment Mary Jo White was nominated three years ahgo, I published the following: Meet Mary Jo White: The Next SEC Chief and a Guaranteed Wall Street Patsy (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/02/28/meet-mary-jo-white-the-next-sec-chief-and-a-guaranteed-wall-street-patsy/).
Now back to Warren…

The contrast between the treatment of highly paid executives and everyone else couldn’t be sharper. The U.S. has a larger prison population than any nation in the world. People are locked up for long stretches for crimes that involve thousands—or even hundreds—of dollars. Even the settlement process is different. For most people accused of a crime, prosecutors may be willing to plead out the cases, but they typically require admission of guilt and, if the crime involves more than a trivial amount of money, time in jail. Various three-strikes rules frequently put people away for life for non-violent crimes involving modest amounts of money. Politicians routinely get elected promising to be “tough on crime,” and both federal and state governments devote immense resources to put and keep criminals in prison.
The Obama Administration has made repeated promises to strengthen enforcement and hold corporate criminals accountable, and the DOJ announced in September that it would place greater emphasis on charging individuals responsible for corporate crimes. Nonetheless, both before and after this DOJ announcement, accountability for corporate crimes is shockingly weak.
This report prepared for Sen. Warren – the first of an annual series on enforcement – highlights twenty criminal and civil cases in 2015 in which the federal government failed to require meaningful accountability from either large corporations or their executives involved in wrongdoing. These twenty cases are not the only examples of prosecutorial timidity when dealing with well-financed corporate defendants. Instead, they illustrate patterns across a range of areas from financial crimes to personal injury to environmental disasters. Despite the fact that the twenty cases listed here were among the most highly publicized cases of corporate misconduct settled in 2015, in only one case was a corporation taken to trial and an individual indicted or otherwise required to answer for their contributions to corporate wrongdoing—and that case involved multiple deaths.
Because prosecutors took only one of these twenty cases to trial and, in many cases, did not even require an admission of guilt as part of the settlement, it is not possible to officially tag most of these corporations and their executives for crimes. Even so, each case is based on widely reported—and widely admitted—facts that, on their face, raise a prima facie case of unlawful conduct. These corporations paid millions—or billions—of dollars to make these cases disappear before any public hearing. If each of these cases had gone to trial, it is possible that some of the companies might have raised a defense that would have created reasonable doubt in jurors’ minds, but that is precisely the problem here: because the prosecutors never took any of these corporations or their executives to trial, there was never a need for anyone to answer in court under oath for their actions.
The report goes on to highlight 20 instances in which corporate criminals escaped justice with barely a slap on the wrist. David Dayen at the Intercept (https://theintercept.com/2016/01/29/elizabeth-warren-challenges-clinton-sanders-to-prosecute-corporate-crime-better-than-obama/) did an excellent job of summarizing a few of them. He writes:

Of the 20 cases, which span Wall Street, the auto industry, pharmaceuticals, natural resources, and more, only one resulted in any convictions to executives, and that was for a misdemeanor — in the Upper Big Branch mine case, where 29 Americans died.
In virtually all the cases she cites – from Standard and Poor’s delivering inflated credit ratings (https://theintercept.com/2016/01/12/hillary-clinton-whiffs-on-reforming-wall-streets-rating-agencies/) to defraud investors during the financial crisis, to Novartis giving kickbacks to pharmacists to steer customers to their products, to an explosion at a Bayer CropScience pesticide plant that killed two employees – the Department of Justice declined to prosecute individual executives or the corporations themselves, resorting to settlements with minuscule fines that barely disrupt the corporations’ business models.
The report also gives new meaning to the term “1 percent.”
JPMorgan’s settlement for giving conflicted advice to its clients over wealth management products was less than 1 percent of annual operating profits.
GM paid under 1 percent of company revenue to settle claims on the faulty ignition switch that killed multiple vehicle passengers.
For-profit college EDMC ripped off students with false promises of well-paying jobs, and paid below 1 percent of its student loan revenue over the period of violations.
Warren further documents how in some settlements, the headline dollar figure looks tough until you read the fine print. A settlement with Graco Children’s Products for selling defective car seats yielded $10 million, but $7 million of it went toward developing safety programs, which any responsible manufacturer would do in their normal course of business. The BP civil settlement over the Deepwater Horizon for $20.8 billion sounds massive until you learn that $5 billion could be deducted as an ordinary business expense for tax purposes.
Warren singles out the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as “particularly feeble,” letting corporate offenders off the hook with weak civil settlements, and then routinely granting the wrongdoers waivers from automatic penalties triggered by the violations. Senator Warren has been at odds (https://newrepublic.com/article/122063/left-has-had-it-here-sec-chair-mary-jo-white) with the SEC and its chair, Mary Jo White, whose tenure has been “extremely disappointing,” in her view.
Warren insists that the bigger problem is a failure to “use the tools Congress has already provided to impose meaningful accountability on corporate offenders.” She even argues that bank regulators had the tools they needed to stop the 2008 financial crisis, but chose not to.
Bingo. This is where Sanders could actually make a huge difference, as opposed to the other candidates who will most certainly be surrounded by Wall Street advisors.

Despite multiple promises by President Obama’s Department of Justice to stiffen enforcement of corporate misconduct, including a 2015 memo creating new guidelines for prosecutions of individuals, almost all major instances lead to toothless settlements, she writes. “Accountability has been shockingly weak.”


Warren also published an op-ed (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/opinion/elizabeth-warren-one-way-to-rebuild-our-institutions.html?_r=0) in the New York Times on Friday discussing her report. “Enforcement isn’t about big government or small government,” she writes there. “It’s about whether government works and who it works for.”
Indeed, and if you’re a Democrat it should be absolutely clear who Hillary Clinton works for…and it’s not you.
For related articles, see:
Shots Fired – Jamie Dimon Questions Elizabeth Warren’s “Understanding of the Global Banking System” (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/06/10/shots-fired-jamie-dimon-questions-elizabeth-warrens-understanding-of-the-global-banking-system/)
Four “Too Big to Fail/Jail” Banks Threaten to Hold Back Funds to Democrats Over Elizabeth Warren (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/03/30/four-too-big-to-failjail-banks-threaten-to-hold-back-funds-to-democrats-over-elizabeth-warren/)
Video of the Day – Elizabeth Warren Torches Janet Yellen on TBTF (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/07/16/video-of-the-day-elizabeth-warren-torches-janet-yellen-on-tbtf/)
Stunning Quote – Larry Summers to Elizabeth Warren in 2009: “Insiders Don’t Criticize Other Insiders” (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/04/29/stunning-quote-larry-summers-to-elizabeth-warren-in-2009-insiders-dont-criticize-other-insiders/)
Elizabeth Warren Confronts Eric Holder, Ben Bernanke and Mary Jo White on Bankster Immunity (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/05/15/elizabeth-warren-confronts-eric-holder-ben-bernanke-and-mary-jo-white-on-bankster-immunity/)
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger


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16th February 2016, 07:01 AM
Oligarch Justice – Powerful Pedophiles Roam Free as Journalist Barrett Brown Returns to JailMichael Krieger (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/author/mkriegs/) | Posted Thursday Jan 22, 2015 at 4:51 pm 11 Comments (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/01/22/oligarch-justice-powerful-pedophiles-roam-free-as-barrett-brown-returns-to-jail/#comments)
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Screen-Shot-2015-01-22-at-4.42.04-PM-281x300.jpgIf Dershowitz was a good friend to Epstein, he was a better lawyer. Along with a dream team of attorneys that included Gerald Lefcourt, Roy Black, and Ken Starr, he was successful in getting federal investigators not to charge Epstein with moving his victims across state lines and other associated crimes. The federal non-prosecution agreement Epstein’s legal team negotiated with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida immunized all named and unnamed “potential co-conspirators” in Epstein’s child trafficking network, which includes those who allegedly procured minors for Epstein and also any powerbrokers who may have molested them. Although Dershowitz wasn’t a signatory to the plea agreement, the latest filings in Roberts’s case against Epstein accuse Dershowitz of essentially negotiating his own immunity.
From the Gawker article: Flight Logs Put Clinton, Dershowitz on Pedophile Billionaire’s Sex Jet (http://gawker.com/flight-logs-put-clinton-dershowitz-on-pedophile-billio-1681039971)
Today was a very big day for journalist, activist and American political prisoner Barrett Brown. Though he was supposed to be sentenced last month (see: Political Prisoner Barrett Brown to Be Sentenced Tomorrow – Why the Result Matters to Freedom in America (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/12/15/political-prisoner-barrett-brown-to-be-sentenced-tomorrow-why-the-result-matters-to-freedom-in-america/)), it was delayed until today.
Tragically, he was ultimately sentenced to 63 months in federal prison for some relatively innocuous offenses. For those of us who have been following this saga for several years, it is abundantly clear that Barrett is being punished for exposing the shady behavior of some powerful people within the intelligence-industrial complex. He is one of several people (Aaron Swartz, Thomas Drake, Private Manning, and Julian Assange) who have been aggressively targeted, not for what they have done, but rather for their ability to embarrass and expose the evils of the rich and powerful.
It’s quite fitting that on the same day Barrett is sentenced to an additional three years in jail (he has already served 28 months), Nick Bryant over at Gawker writes a very interesting piece about all of the high profile people who not only befriended, but also repeatedly took flights with, pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
Before I get into the meat of this piece, I want to make it clear that just because certain people were on these flights doesn’t mean they committed any crimes (although it certainly shows horrible judgement of character). Nevertheless, some people mentioned clearly did commit crimes, and when you see how easily these people got off, compared to say Barrett Brown, you’ll see what a sad joke American “justice” has become.
With that out of the way, here are some excerpts from the Gawker article (http://gawker.com/flight-logs-put-clinton-dershowitz-on-pedophile-billio-1681039971):

Bill Clinton took repeated trips on the “Lolita Express (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/prince-andrew-allegation-first-pictures-4925112)“—the private passenger jet owned by billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein—with an actress in softcore porn movies whose name appears in Epstein’s address book under an entry for “massages,” according to flight logbooks obtained by Gawker and published today for the first time (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1507315-epstein-flight-manifests.html). The logs also show that Clinton shared more than a dozen flights with a woman who federal prosecutors believe procured underage girls to sexually service Epstein and his friends and acted as a “potential co-conspirator” in his crimes.
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 (http://gawker.com/305599/jail-bound-ken-starr-cant-get-jeffrey-epstein-off) in Florida to one count of soliciting underage girls for sex (and one count of adult solicitation), for which he served just over a year in county jail. But sprawling local, state, and federal investigations into the eccentric investor’s habit of paying teen girls for “massages”—sessions during which he would allegedly penetrate girls with sex toys, demand to be masturbated, and have intercourse—turned up a massive network of victims, including 35 female minors whom federal prosecutors believed he’d sexually abused. He has reportedly settled lawsuits from more than 30 “Jane Doe” victims since 2008; the youngest alleged victim was 12 years old at the time of her abuse.
For all of this, the extremely wealthy Epstein served only a year in jail. Furthermore, as an excellent, must read article (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/07/20/jeffrey-epstein-billionaire-pedophile-goes-free.html) from the Daily Beast noted at the time: “During Epstein’s term of “house arrest,” he made several trips each month to his New York home and his private Caribbean island. In the earlier stage of his sentence for soliciting prostitution with a minor—13 months in the Palm Beach Stockade—he was allowed out to his office each day.”
In summer of 2008, just before the banker bailouts were announced, this guy was already getting banker justice. Back to Gawker.

Epstein’s predatory past, and his now-inconvenient relationships with a Who’s Who of the Davos set, hit the front pages again earlier this month (http://gawker.com/report-underage-girl-was-paid-15-000-to-have-sex-with-1677370579) when one of his victims, Virginia Roberts, claimed in a federal court filing that Epstein recruited her as a “sex slave” at the age of 15 and “sexually trafficked [her] to politically-connected and financially-powerful people,” including Prince Andrew and attorney Alan Dershowitz. (The latter, the filing claimed, had sex with the victim “on private planes”; Dershowitz vigorously denies the charges, as does Prince Andrew.)
Two female associates of Epstein—the socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein’s former assistant Sarah Kellen—have been repeatedly accused in court filings of acting as pimps for him, recruiting and grooming young girls into their network of child sex workers, and frequently participating in sex acts with them. Kellen in particular was believed by detectives in the Palm Beach Police Department, which was the first to start unraveling the operation, to be so deeply involved in the enterprise that they prepared a warrant for her arrest as an accessory to molestation and sex with minors. In the end, she was never arrested or charged, and federal prosecutors granted her immunity in a 2007 non-prosecution agreement that described her as a “potential co-conspirator” in sex trafficking.
Read that again. In the end, she was never arrested or charged and received immunity. See:
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Clinton shared Epstein’s plane with Kellen and Maxwell on at least 11 flights in 2002 and 2003—before any of the allegations against them became public—according to the pilots’ logbooks, which have surfaced in civil litigation surrounding Epstein’s crimes. In January 2002, for instance, Clinton, his aide Doug Band, and Clinton’s Secret Service detail are listed on a flight from Japan to Hong Kong (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1507315-epstein-flight-manifests.html#document/p10) with Epstein, Maxwell, Kellen, and two women described only as “Janice” and “Jessica.” One month later, records show, Clinton hopped a ride from Miami to Westchester on a flight that also included Epstein, Maxwell, Kellen, and a woman described only as “one female.”
In 2002, as New York has reported (http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/n_7912/), Clinton recruited Epstein to make his plane available for a week-long anti-poverty and anti-AIDS tour of Africa with Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker, billionaire creep Ron Burkle, Clinton confidant Gayle Smith (who now serves on Barack Obama’s National Security Council), and others. The logs from that trip (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1507315-epstein-flight-manifests.html#document/p13) show that Maxwell, Kellen, and a woman named Chauntae Davis joined the entourage for five days.


Other prominent figures whose names appear in the logs, which document globe-spanning flights on Epstein’s planes during various periods from 1997 to 2005, include Dershowitz, former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president Larry Summers, Naomi Campbell, and scientist Stephen Pinker.
The logs also cast doubt on public statements made by Dershowitz, who has been vigorously downplaying his relationship with Epstein since Roberts levied her accusations against him. Dershowitz has attempted to paint himself as a mere passing acquaintance of Epstein, suggesting to the American Lawyer last week (http://www.americanlawyer.com/id=1202715316005/Prof-Dershowitz-Tell-Me-How-You-Really-Feel) that he only began hanging around the billionaire to fundraise for his school, Harvard.

Q. From what I’ve read, your relationship with Epstein seemed chummy. You socialized with him and you and your family stayed at his various homes. Isn’t it a bad idea for a lawyer to be so close to a notorious client?
A. Let me tell you how I met him. I was introduced to him by Lady de Rothschild as an academic colleague. He was friendly with Larry Summers… He was in the process of contributing $50 million to Harvard for evolutionary biology.
What’s more, Dershowitz told the American Lawyer, he is loyal to his wife, who is always by his side: “I’ve been married to the same woman for 28 years. She goes with me everywhere. People know that I won’t argue a case or give a speech unless my wife travels with me. This is not the profile of someone who screws around.”
But according to the flight logs, Dershowitz was close enough to Epstein to have accompanied him on a flight from Palm Beach to New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport as early as December 1997 (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1507315-epstein-flight-manifests.html#document/p59). On that flight, the pair was accompanied by a number of people, including one unidentified “female,” a “Hazel,” a “Claire,” and Maxwell.
The logs also show Dershowitz on a flight with Epstein from Bedminster, Mass., to Teterboro inOctober 1998 (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1507315-epstein-flight-manifests.html#document/p67), and a flight from Teterboro to Martha’s Vineyard in 1999 (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1507315-epstein-flight-manifests.html#document/p68). And a 2005 trip from Massachusetts to Montreal (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1507315-epstein-flight-manifests.html#document/p35) shows him traveling with Epstein, “Tatianna,” and others.
One things the logs don’t show: Dershowitz’s wife traveling with him.
• Dershowitz also said of Epstein: “I’m on my 20th book. . . . The only person outside my immediate family that I send drafts to is Jeffrey.”
Sure sounds like a passing acquaintance to me. You’d think Dersh would be better at keeping his lies straight.

If Dershowitz was a good friend to Epstein, he was a better lawyer. Along with a dream team of attorneys that included Gerald Lefcourt, Roy Black, and Ken Starr, he was successful in getting federal investigators not to charge Epstein with moving his victims across state lines and other associated crimes. The federal non-prosecution agreement Epstein’s legal team negotiated with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida immunized all named and unnamed “potential co-conspirators” in Epstein’s child trafficking network, which includes those who allegedly procured minors for Epstein and also any powerbrokers who may have molested them. Although Dershowitz wasn’t a signatory to the plea agreement, the latest filings in Roberts’s case against Epstein accuse Dershowitz of essentially negotiating his own immunity:
Dershowitz would later play a significant role in negotiating the NPA on Epstein’s behalf. Indeed, Dershowitz helped negotiate an agreement that provided immunity from federal prosecution in the Southern District of Florida not only to Epstein, but also to “any potential co-conspirators of Epstein”. . . . Thus, Dershowitz helped negotiate an agreement with a provision that provided protection for himself against criminal prosecution in Florida for sexually abusing Jane Doe #3.

This is how oligarchs receive justice. You already saw what happens to the plebs.

I think George Carlin said it best:


In Liberty,
Michael Krieger



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