Bringing Justice In The Midst Of A Tangled Web

On Wednesday, Forbes posted an article about financier Jeffrey Epstein. Mr. Epstein was charged with sex crimes in Florida and avoided trial with a plea deal that seemed very lenient for the charges involved. He was arrested Saturday in New York City and charged with sex trafficking minors. He is expected to appear in court in New York on Monday.

The article reports:

A federal appeals court Wednesday ordered that 167 documents in a lawsuit that alleges famously well-connected financier Jeffrey Epstein participated in a sex-trafficking ring should be unsealed—and that many of his powerful friends could be named.

  • In its 27-page decision, the court cited the public’s right to access the case information outweighed the privacy of certain individuals, “including numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well‐known Prime Minister, and other world leaders.” 
  • Virginia Guiffre (now Roberts) filed the lawsuit against Ghislane Maxwell, alleging that she had used her as part of a sex trafficking network of underage girls to Epstein and a number of his famous friends, including his lawyer Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew. Both men denied the accusations.
  • Dershowitz has supported unsealing the documents, according to the Daily Beast.
  • The documents will not be immediately available, as anonymous individuals involved in the case have two weeks to file appeals.
  • The court advised the documents be read carefully. “We therefore urge the media to exercise restraint in covering potentially defamatory allegations, and we caution the public to read such accounts with discernment,” wrote the court in its decision.

In January 2015, The U.K. Daily Mail posted some of the flight logs from the “Lolita Express’ (the nickname of Epstein’s airplane that he used to transport people and underage girls to his private island. Please follow the link to the article to read the names. Because of those names, I would be very surprised if the court documents are actually unsealed. Mr. Epstein had connections in high places, which allowed him to avoid the punishment in Florida that an ordinary person would have received. It will be interesting to see if he has those same connections in New York City.