February 24, 2019: By His Friends, We Know the President

 

2/24/19: Did someone just say, “immorality?” Today we learn that a federal judge has accused current Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta of violating the rights of sexual abuse victims. The case involves a non-prosecution agreement worked out in 2008 with Jeffrey Epstein. 

A collage created by Democrats makes a point.

 

He was facing life in prison if he went to trial. 

Let the Miami Herald tell you who he is:  

Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, 54, was accused of assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls – with the help of young female recruiters – to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day, the Town of Palm Beach police found.

 

If you don’t think this story has enough to interest conspiracy theorists of all political persuasions, consider this: 

The eccentric hedge fund manager, whose friends included former President Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew, was also suspected of trafficking minor girls, often from overseas, for sex parties at his other homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and the Caribbean, FBI and court records show.

 

The more you read about Epstein, the more disgusting the story becomes. He was facing life in prison if he went to trial. Acosta, the man in charge of the case, met him privately for breakfast and a deal was struck. 

Epstein would serve 13 months in a county jail; but the non-prosecution agreement would shut down an F.B.I. investigation looking for additional victims and likely to uncover powerful individuals who had participate. Epstein plead guilty to two charges of soliciting prostitution. The agreement was kept secret from his victims, some as young as 13. That meant none of them and none of their lawyers would show up in court and protest the deal.

 

In a second article, the Herald offered up the sordid details of the molestation of as many as 102 middle school and high school girls. 

The girls arrived, sometimes by taxi, for trysts at all hours of the day and night. Few were told much more than that they would be paid to give an old man a massage – and that he might ask them to strip down to their underwear or get naked. But what began as a massage often led to masturbation, oral sex, intercourse and other sex acts, police and court records show. The alleged abuse dates back to 2001 and went on for years.

 

Alex Acosta, right, in a cabinet meeting.

Yet, as the Herald notes, Acosta was on a list of possible replacements for Attorney General Jeff Sessions. 

Asked Friday about the matter, President Trump shrugged and offered Acosta his support. “I really don’t know too much about it,” he told reporters gathered in the Oval Office. “I know he’s done a great job as labor secretary, and that [series of crimes] seems like a long time ago.” 

Unless you were the victim, of course.

 

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SINCE WE’RE ON THE TOPIC of “sex crimes,” let’s add Robert Kraft to the mix. Kraft, 77, is famous for annual appearances at the Super Bowl, where his team, the New England Patriots, always wins. 

Federal and Florida state authorities have now broken up a prostitution ring, allegedly operating behind the façade of day spas, offering hard working rich guys relaxing massages. Kraft is just one of several big names caught up in the story – and supposedly caught on tape. 

What makes the story worse is that almost all of the women working in these spas have been trafficked from China. According to Police Sheriff William Snyder of Martin County, “These women were sleeping in massage parlors, on the massage tables and had no access to transportation.” 

So: no getaways. 

Add in the fact most had limited English, and you had the perfect sex workers and victims. “Sometimes, I would see people outside try to talk to them, and they wouldn’t understand,” said the owner of a business located next to one of the spas. “None of them speak English.” 

Even if convicted, Kraft could get off with a hundred hours of community service. If found guilty, we might want to consider what Sheriff Daryl Loar of Indian River County said about alleged male patrons like Kraft. “These ‘Johns’…were certainly supplying the funds to perpetuate human trafficking [emphasis added]”

 

Kraft is a lifelong Democrat; but he’s a friend of Trump and donated a million dollars to his Inaugural Committee, a den of thieves itself. (To be fair, Kraft also donated to President Obama in the past.) 

So why the friendship? Kraft once explained: 

When Myra [his wife] died, Melania and Donald came up to the funeral in our synagogue, then they came for memorial week to visit with me. Then he called me once a week for the whole year, the most depressing year of my life when I was down and out. He called me every week to see how I was doing, invited me to things, tried to lift my spirits. He was one of five or six people that were like that. I remember that.

 

Asked for comment on the matter of Kraft’s weekend arrest, Trump responded, “Well it’s very sad, I was very surprised to see it. He’s proclaimed his innocence totally, but I’m very surprised to see it.” 

 

A liberal and a fan of the rule of law. 

Here’s a tip for Trump and Kraft and Epstein and Acosta and the rest of their kind. All individuals found guilty of participating in sex-trafficking should be thrown in jail. Those who have sex with the victims should pay massive fines or join traffickers in jail, for shorter stays. 

Sympathy should be with victims in every proven case. And if we of a liberal bent believed a wall was a realistic solution to ending sex-trafficking across the border, we’d be in favor. But the women Kraft was allegedly having sex with didn’t come across some desert stretch. Epstein’s victims weren’t immigrant girls. They were teens from South Florida, enticed into his web. 

As a liberal, let me say, I am a fan of law and order. I hope R. Kelly, also accused of abusing young girls, goes to jail and rots – if found guilty, I mean. I’m glad Jussie Smollett’s hoax “hate crime” was revealed and glad he lost his job. I wish the president would say something stronger about real hate crimes, however, and not encourage people like the guy who sent bombs to CNN. 

I hope Kraft pays a hefty fine, at least, for his participation.

 

* 

“Such respect for a brave man…who refused to break.” 

WITH THAT, we come to the end of our comments for the weekend. On Saturday we saw the sentencing documents in the case of Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign manager, and ten-time convicted felon. Prosecutors are calling for Manafort to spend a minimum of 17 ½ years in prison for his crimes. That doesn’t include charges filed against him in a separate venue. 

You can read a summary of Manafort’s misdeeds if you like and ponder the fact that federal prosecutors filed an 800-page document outlining evidence against him. Then you might remember what the president said about the felonious fellow. “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family,” Trump tweeted last August. “‘Justice’ took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break.’” 

“Such respect for a brave man!” Trump added – which seemed to be a hint that he might one day pardon Paul.

 

So, let’s end with the idea that by a person’s friends we know them. Manafort has an extensive history of working with shady international characters. He had longstanding ties to Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs when Trump hired him; and you’d think a candidate for president might have checked that out and rejected him. Manafort has been convicted of money laundering and tax fraud. He’s accused of witness tampering last year, in hopes of keeping secret the story of all his contacts with Russians during the 2016 campaign. In court filings Saturday, prosecutors charged that Manafort had shattered a plea agreement and “brazenly violated the law.” 

The sentencing document further stated: 

Manafort chose repeatedly and knowingly to violate the law—whether the laws proscribed garden-variety crimes such as tax fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, and bank fraud, or more esoteric laws that he nevertheless was intimately familiar with, such as the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

 

Manafort, the man the president called “brave,” had shown a “hardened adherence to committing crimes….His criminal actions were bold, some of which were committed while under a spotlight due to his work as the campaign manager and, later, while he was on bail from this Court.” 

So, would the right kind of walls help us with Manafort, Kraft, Epstein, Smollett, and several additional suspects from the Trump 2016 campaign? Yes. Yes, they would. As Don Jr. said recently, “Walls work.” 

This is particularly true when those walls have bars on all the windows.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (7/7/21): Kraft’s lawyers argued that the tapes from the massage parlor could not be admitted as evidence because police had violated clients’ rights by taping them taking advantage of trafficked women. 

The judge agreed and threw out the evidence; and the case collapsed.