![]() ![]() They never understood the seriousness and scope of his crimes.” The crime was downplayed from the beginning, and I’m sure that Trump’s people felt this was a long time ago and it was no big deal. “Absolutely,” she says, “but it fits the pattern of the entire arc of the story. She’s in no doubt that Trump’s people, and almost certainly Trump himself, knew of Acosta’s controversial role in Epstein’s surprisingly lenient sentencing. “But he barely got questioned about it, so I thought: I wonder what the women think about this who were the girls who were betrayed?” “I thought, all this is now going to come out,” says Brown, an ebullient, plain-speaking woman in her late 50s. Acosta had been the US attorney for the southern district of Florida, in which role he had approved Epstein’s highly favourable plea bargain, going so far as to visit Epstein’s principal lawyer in a secret hotel meeting some 70 miles from his office. Then a short while later the newly elected Donald Trump appointed Alexander Acosta as labor secretary in his administration, a position whose responsibilities included combating sex trafficking. The crime was downplayed from the beginning, and I’m sure Trump’s people felt it was a long time ago and no big deal Initially, there was little interest among her editors for what was an old story, and she was under pressure to concentrate on her reporting beat – Florida’s notorious prison system. Yet every aspect of the previous paragraph would have seemed like pure fantasy when Brown began her research. The whole unsavoury story is told by Brown in gripping detail in her just published book, Perversion of Justice. Brown’s intrepid work led to a three-part Herald series in 2018 on Epstein that would encourage federal authorities to reopen the investigation and to arrest the financier.Īs the world knows, in August 2019 Epstein would die in the grim Metropolitan Correctional Center prison in New York – whether from his own hand or another’s remains the subject of much speculation – and eventually his former girlfriend and social aide, Ghislaine Maxwell, would be tracked down to her New Hampshire hideout and charged with related crimes. Although they seemingly had enough evidence to support his prosecution for much more serious crimes, they offered him a “sweetheart deal” on a relatively minor charge. “I wanted to do a story on sex trafficking,” she recalls on a Zoom call from New York, “but every time I googled Florida and sex trafficking, a story about Jeffrey Epstein came up.”Īs she delved deeper, she realised just how far the authorities had bent over backwards to accommodate Epstein and his battery of well-paid lawyers. Photograph: Patrick McMullan/Getty Images She is accused of recruiting young girls for him. How did he get off so lightly? And how was he able to return to his gilded world of billionaire friends and celebrity playmates without any real stigma attached to his name? These were the questions that Julie Brown, an overworked and underpaid investigative journalist at the Miami Herald, kept asking herself towards the end of 2016.Įpstein with Ghislaine Maxwell in 2005. He also had access to another room where a television had been installed for him. He was granted immunity for himself and four assistants for any related charges, was awarded daily work release, in which he was driven to his office by his own driver, and at night he was allowed to sleep with his jail door open. Instead he received an 18-month sentence, of which he served less than 13 months in a private wing of the county jail. Someone accused of Epstein’s alleged crimes might have been looking at 20 years in a gang-dominated penitentiary. The police were never able to gain access to this potential evidence.įlorida is notorious for its harsh prison system and lengthy sentencing. When the police arrived at his Palm Beach mansion, six computer hard drives had been removed, along with video recordings from his internal closed circuit system. For a start, Epstein appeared to be tipped off that he was going to be arrested. There were also a number of testaments to rape.īut all throughout the prosecution seemed reluctant to take Epstein to court and the police were always one step behind their target. The local police had uncovered evidence that Epstein had sexually coerced and abused scores of young women and girls, some as young as 13 or 14. It was the culmination of a three-year investigation, involving first state and then federal authorities. In 2008 Epstein was sent to prison, having pleaded guilty to the charge of procuring for prostitution a girl below the age of 18. ![]()
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