WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A last-minute settlement has been reached in Florida in a long-running lawsuit involving a politically-connected financier accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls.
The deal came Tuesday just before jury selection was to begin. It means none of the women will be able to testify against Jeffrey Epstein for now.
A lawyer for Epstein read an apology from him to attorney Bradley Edwards, who represents some of Epstein’s accusers. Edwards claimed Epstein tried to damage his reputation by suing him.
The 65-year-old Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to state sex charges, served a year in jail and became a registered sex offender. But in a secret deal with federal prosecutors led by now-Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, Epstein avoided a possible life term, and victims weren’t heard from in court.
The absolute best justice that money can buy. I often wonder if decades or centuries from now historians will point to cases like this as signs of the decline and fall of the Republic.
Before everyone starts complaining that Epstein has avoided justice again, this was a civil lawsuit seeking money to compensate the victims for the harm inflicted on them back in the day. It was their decision to settle the lawsuit, not the decision of any prosecutor or government official. I have little doubt that the amount of money they chose to accept, in lieu of testifying about their experiences in open court, was quite high. And we do not know whether the settlement agreement included any kind of restrictions on the victims’ ability to talk about what happened to them.
So it wasn’t in the basement of a pizza parlor and it wasn’t Democrats who set it up.
Without his political ties and enormous wealth, Epstein would never again see the light of day.
I’m not sure what good it does to game the system and become fabulously wealthy and well connected if you can’t have sex with a bunch of teenage girls for all your effort. He should have learned to play the guitar and formed a band, then it would have all been OK with most people.
That was a nice description of the ironies in our society.