Florida Governor Orders Investigation Into Jeffrey Epstein Case After Senator Threatened

By Aaron Kesel

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has ordered a state criminal probe into the actions of the Palm Beach sheriff and the former Palm Beach State Attorney, Barry Krischer, for their handling of the Jeffrey Epstein underage sex trafficking case, the Miami Herald reported.

More than 40 victims as young as 14 have been reported as part of Epstein’s “vast network.”  Epstein now faces 45 years in jail — one indictment can be read here.

DeSantis faced pressure after Epstein was found injured in his cell from a possible suicide or murder attempt and after a Florida Senator Lauren Book was threatened for looking into the case and demanding an investigation. Book then created a petition to instruct the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to overtake the investigation.

Book started a petition which received over 4,000 signatures quickly from several sexual assault survivors and supporters against Epstein across the U.S.

“We got support for this from all over the country,’’ Book said Tuesday. “Many of them are sexual assault survivors who have lived in the shadows for so long and who wanted to let Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors know that they are not alone.’’

A lawyer who represented three of Jeffrey Epstein’s accusers more than a decade ago suggested that Epstein’s injuries may have been the result of an attempted “hit” to prevent him from going to trial.

“I do question whether it was a true suicide attempt. I mean how do you choke yourself? It doesn’t make any sense,” Spencer Kuvin told the UK tabloid The Sun. “I question whether or not it was a true suicide attempt that Mr. Epstein was involved in in jail or whether or not there may be some powerful people who just don’t want him to talk.”

Kuvin added, “There’s no doubt in my mind that no jail will protect you when there’s powerful people that want to reach you – wherever you are.”

At the same time Florida Senator Lauren Book has alleged she was threatened for seeking to investigate Epstein’s case by demanding a state inquiry into Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw’s handling of accused sex trafficker’s lenient work release program, the Miami Herald reported. 

“I’ve received countless phone calls saying ‘Little girl you don’t know what you’re getting into,’ and telling me that I should just stop,’’ Book said in an interview with the Herald.

Book is ironically a child sexual abuse survivor herself and has worked relentlessly to pass strict sex offender laws in Florida.

Epstein, a registered sex offender, knew several rich and powerful people, including former President Bill Clinton and President Trump. A flight ledger released revealed Bill Clinton’s name 27 times; Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, also alleged Trump took at least one flight on Epstein’s plane dubbed ‘Lolita Express,’ hitching a ride back to New York under oath.

Epstein’s friends and visitors once included past and future presidents, rock stars, and some of the country’s richest men. With all these people hanging around Epstein one has to wonder how many of these people knew or participated in Epstein’s activities.

Epstein was a hedge fund manager for Bear Sterns, sat on the Harvard, Mind, Brain and Behavior Committee, and is a member of both Trilateral Commission and the CFR. Epstein also claims to have helped found the Clinton Foundation. Within his years in all these organizations and others, Epstein became very networked within the upper echelons of society.

Epstein’s rise is very odd and riddled with intelligence agency and mafia connections, from being appointed to the elite NYC Dalton school by William Barr’s father Donald Barr who was a part of OSS to connections to Roy Cohn (who is connected to former CIA Cuban asset Meyer Lansky and another child prostitution blackmail ring that was ran by Lewis Rosentiel.)

For more on Rosentiel see Whitney Webb’s in-depth investigation by MintPress News, which reveals Rosentiel’s former wife’s testimony about the blackmail ring Cohn was linked to trafficking young boys. Kaufman further claimed that Cohn, former FBI director Herbert Hoover and her ex-husband engaged in sexual activity with these minors.

In other words, it appears that Epstein is linked to a former pedophile blackmail ring through Cohn.

The fact remains that the 66-year-old pedophile was given an unfair plea deal, violating the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act established in 2004, lawyers for the women have repeatedly stated. The plea deal, according to sources, was a deal arranged with the FBI in exchange for ratting out financial malfeasance at Bear Sterns by hedge fund managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, an unthinkable exchange.

Beyond that, the deal included bizarre protection for Epstein’s powerful wealthy clients from investigation or prosecution. All of this, despite the man running a child trafficking ring procuring young girls.

Now the governor aims to find out why — and more importantly how — he was given such a lenient sentence.

Even former Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter, whose department conducted the initial investigation into Epstein, said in a civil lawsuit deposition that Epstein got off easy.

“That wasn’t an appropriate resolution of this matter,” Reiter said, arguing that the charges against Epstein were “very minor,” compared to what the facts called for.

A former Palm Beach sheriff’s deputy, John Dougan, who fled to Moscow in 2016 claims that Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw was behind an effort to access Book’s phone and emails by using the pretext of “imminent danger’’ to obtain her personal information according to a website, Pbsotalk.

The Palm Beach Police Department denied the allegations, and has said it will open an investigation into why Epstein was permitted to leave prison and spend much of his 2008-2009 incarceration in an office in West Palm Beach, Tampa Bay reported.

Bradshaw himself reiterated that promise in a letter to Florida Governor DeSantis.

“I believe the public interest would be best served by an FDLE-led investigation examining every aspect of the Epstein case, from court sentencing to incarceration,’’ Bradshaw wrote.

Epstein served just 13 months of specialized prison leave where he only had to stay there at night and could leave in the morning for work. His illegal deal was organized by former Miami U.S. attorney and current Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta.

Acosta denied that he gave Epstein special treatment. Explaining his decision in the case in a 2011 letter, Acosta said he backed off from pressing charges after “a year-long assault on the prosecution and the prosecutors” by “an army of legal superstars” who represented Epstein, including Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz; Kenneth Starr, who as independent counsel led the investigation that brought about President Bill Clinton’s impeachment; and some of the U.S.’s most prominent defense attorneys, such as Roy Black, Gerald Lefcourt and Jay Lefkowitz.

“The defense strategy was not limited to legal issues,” Acosta wrote.

Defense counsel investigated individual prosecutors and their families, looking for personal peccadilloes that may provide a basis for disqualification.

Dershowitz told the Chicago Tribune that no such effort to stir the prosecutors ever took place. “That’s just dead wrong,” he said. “I would never participate in anything of that kind. Of course, we investigated the witnesses but not Acosta’s deputies. That’s absurd.”Acosta’s “intention was to indict, and he fought hard and tried to get the best deal he could,” Dershowitz said. “We out lawyered him.”

However,  Acosta’s staff had advocated for him to pursue a federal indictment; instead, he offered a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein without any of the victims’ knowledge of the deal.

Acosta has since resigned as Labor Secretary following Epstein’s second arrest in New York.

President Trump banned Epstein from his Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach “because Epstein sexually assaulted an underage girl at the club,” Bradley Edwards, an attorney who represents three of the young women, said in court documents Washington Post reported.

Trump denies ever knowing Epstein, although Trump told New York magazine in 2002, “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” three years before Epstein began to be investigated. “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 also dined at Epstein’s house, according to a New York magazine article which discussed the guests who attended Epstein’s dinner party.

Trump was accused by one victim, Katie Johnson, of raping her at one of Epstein’s parties but that claim turned out to be not credible according to the jury. She later confessed that she made it all up after filing three lawsuits and dropped her suit.

Still, there is a looming case from Trump’s past that may make that case legitimate against the alleged sexual predator in the White House who said he “grabs women by the p***y.” A joint report by Wayne Madsen and Justice Integrity Project (JIP) revealed the story of “Maria,” who was identified in two 2016 federal civil lawsuits brought against Trump and Epstein by Johnson (aka, “Jane Doe” versus Trump).

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein allegedly sodomized and raped Maria at the age of 12 along with at least one other underage girl at a midtown Manhattan townhouse in 1994, then owned by Epstein’s friend, Les Wexner, owner of companies like Victoria’s Secret, according to the investigation by the Andrew Kreig and Wayne Madsen.

According to Kreig and Madsen, “Maria was kidnapped on March 19, 1993, when she was 11-years old from the front of Nash’s Pizza in Waterbury, Connecticut. The girl’s kidnappers were involved in a child trafficking ring that provided abductees to wealthy individuals like Trump and Epstein in Manhattan.” That organization was not named in the report.

Johnson claimed Epstein raped her at two different parties, including once after she had been raped by Trump. During the second encounter with Epstein, Johnson stated that Epstein raped her “anally and vaginally despite her loud pleas to stop.” Johnson further stated that Epstein attempted to assault her by hitting her head “with his closed fists,” while he angrily screamed that he [Epstein], rather than Trump, should have been the one who took the girl’s virginity.

According to the suit, Trump told Johnson that if she ever revealed the incident, the girl and her family would be “physically harmed if not killed.” Johnson also stated that Epstein periodically reiterated to her Trump’s earlier threat that if she were to “reveal any of the details of his sexual and physical abuse of her or else,” she and her family would be “seriously physically harmed, if not killed.”

If true, the question must be asked why Katie Johnson (Jane Doe) confessed to making up her claims; the answer could be that she was intimidated to do so either legally or physically. It’s a known practice for lawyers to intimidate whistleblowers, victims and reporters alike to set them up for legal consequences.

Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post. Support us at Patreon. Follow us on Minds, Steemit, SoMee, BitChute, Facebook and Twitter.

Image credit: The Mind Unleashed

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