Reporter Julie K. Brown isn’t convinced the Jeffrey Epstein took his own life
Did the now-deceased, disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have links to the Israeli intelligence community? An investigative reporter for The Miami Herald claims that credible details making the link “are not far-fetched and need to be explored in further detail and examined.”
“It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Epstein had
connections to the [Israeli intelligence community],” says Julie K. Brown,
whose book “Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story” was released on
July 20.
“Robert Maxwell certainly had those kinds of connections,
and Epstein had a close relationship with Robert Maxwell,” the 59-year-old
American journalist told The Times of Israel via Zoom call from her home in
Hollywood, Florida.
Brown keenly stresses the striking similarities between
Jeffrey Epstein’s death in August 2019 and Robert Maxwell’s death in November
1991. The 68-year-old British media mogul was said to have drowned after
falling from his luxurious yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, near the Canary Islands.
Spanish police insisted no foul play was suspected in Maxwell’s death, but
rumors about how exactly Maxwell died have never gone away. One theory points
to a possible suicide. Another claims Maxwell was assassinated by the Israeli
Mossad intelligence agency, for which he was secretly working.
Maxwell is buried on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives. Many
members of the Israeli intelligence community attended his funeral. So too did
Yitzhak Shamir, Israel’s then-prime minister. Shamir eulogized the British
tycoon for the political connections he brought to Israel during the 1980s, and
for the money he invested in it.
Two years ago, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking
charges, 66-year-old American financier Epstein was found hanging in his cell
in a Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. Since then, numerous
theories have swirled about Epstein’s true cause of death, making the leap from
conspiracy fodder into the cultural mainstream.
According to Brown, “neither the FBI nor the United States
Justice Department have convinced me that Jefferey Epstein committed suicide.”
“Why would Epstein give up before he even got to court?”
Brown asks. She also points to a number of other murky details: Epstein
breaking three bones in his neck before he died, and the fact that the two
prison guards who were supposed to be keeping a watchful eye on Epstein in his
Manhattan jail cell mysteriously fell asleep at the same time.
“It just defies common sense,” Brown says. “And why are [US]
authorities not making the information they do know about Epstein’s death
public?”
The Israel connection
One chapter in Brown’s latest book argues that the complex
relationship Jeffery Epstein had with the Maxwell family may provide further
answers. That history stretches back to the mid-1980s, when Epstein allegedly
began helping Robert Maxwell hide money in numerous offshore bank accounts.
Maxwell, a self-made billionaire, was born Ján Ludvík Hyman
Binyamin Hoch, into a poor, Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish family in
Czechoslovakia in 1923. Maxwell lost both his parents in the Holocaust, and
later made his fortune in the book publishing and newspaper industries.
He went on to become a parliamentary representative for
Britain’s Labour Party, but the final years of Maxwell’s life were plagued by
financial trouble and earned him the nickname “the crook of the century.”
Maxwell defaulted on $2 billion worth of loans and subsequently raided millions
of pounds from his company’s retirement fund, even stealing from his own
staff’s pensions and shares in Britain’s Mirror Group as he refused to face his
inevitable bankruptcy.
Following Robert Maxwell’s death three decades ago, Epstein
became an important figure to certain members of the Maxwell family, who were
then left bankrupt and riddled with debt. Brown notes, for instance, that
Epstein attended an event at New York’s Plaza Hotel on November 24, 1991, at
which the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research paid tribute to Robert Maxwell.
The author also speculates that Epstein may have even
offered financial assistance to Robert Maxwell’s wife Elizabeth when she became
a widow. Epstein then became romantically involved with Elizabeth and Robert
Maxwell’s ninth child, Ghislaine.
Known to be her father’s favorite child and his most trusted
confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell may have been aware of many secrets her father
took to the grave relating to his controversial political, financial, and
espionage life, believes Brown.
A budding relationship
After her father’s death, Ghislaine Maxwell moved from
London to New York — partially to escape all of the negative publicity
surrounding it, but also to reinvent herself in the city’s buzzing celebrity
social circle. This was a crucial component of Epstein and Maxwell’s complex
relationship: She connected him to powerful figures who were then beyond his
reach such as the Clintons, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew. In return, Epstein
bankrolled her.
Brown believes Maxwell was in love with Epstein, but Epstein
manipulated her to gratify a sexual obsession he had with underage women, which
the journalist describes as “a sickness.”
“Epstein was a [sociopath] who felt he had enough power and
money to be above the law,” says Brown. “And he believed he was brilliant
enough to manipulate anyone to get what he wanted.”
“How much money Ghislaine Maxwell had when her father died
has always been a mystery,” says Brown. “But Maxwell enjoyed the high life, and
never had any real career or job, so Epstein supported her financially.
Ghislaine Maxwell is currently charged in the United States
with lying under oath and recruiting, grooming and trafficking girls to be
sexually abused by Epstein from the 1990s through 2004. The 59-year-old
outspoken British socialite has pleaded not guilty, and is presently being held
in a New York prison awaiting trial, which is set to begin this coming
November. If convicted, Maxwell could face up to 80 years in prison.
“So far, Maxwell is playing the same game with her defense
[lawyers] as Epstein did: They are throwing every motion they can against these
prosecutors to try to wear them down,” says Brown. “But it probably won’t work
because the prosecutors that are handling [the case] this time around are much
more dedicated and are not going to give up as easily.”
The best of the worst
Brown has a detailed understanding of how prosecutors can be
corrupted in a high-profile case relating to sex trafficking accusations: Her
newly-released book began as a three-part series of investigative articles she
wrote for The Miami Herald in 2018. They exposed a secret plea deal arranged by
Epstein’s lawyers, who undermined and manipulated the US criminal justice
system so their client, Epstein, could get a softer prison sentence and
ultimately escape federal prosecution.
Brown showed how back in 2007 Epstein was accused of
assembling a 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 in Palm Beach, Florida, as often as three times a
day.
Brown’s articles also noted how FBI and court records showed
Epstein was suspected of trafficking minor girls, often from overseas, for sex
parties at his other homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and the Caribbean.
“This dark and deep obsession that Epstein had [with
underage women] was an addiction,” says Brown. “And the victims [I interviewed]
told me that if they couldn’t bring him [another] girl, he would get angry at
them. I imagine Epstein was doing the same thing with Ghislaine Maxwell,
saying, ‘You’ve got to bring me more girls.'”
“One of the ironies of this case is that Maxwell seemed to
have moved herself away from Epstein just when my series [of articles] came
out,” says Brown. “But then the whole [story] resurrected itself in her life
again.”
Based on a 53-page federal indictment, Epstein back in 2008
could have potentially ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life.
Instead, the non-prosecution agreement Epstein’s lawyers secretly cut with
federal prosecutors at the time shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether
there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s
sex crimes.
The deal required that Epstein plead guilty to two
prostitution charges in a state court and agree to serve just 13 months in a
county jail in Palm Beach, Florida. This essentially made the case that Epstein
was only paying for sex, when he actually stood accused of sexually abusing
minors.
“To see prosecutors, who are supposed to be advocating for
victims, work so closely with Epstein’s lawyers to make this case go away was
pretty surprising,” says Brown.
The journalist also exposed how Epstein’s enormous wealth
and prestige afforded him extra privileges as he served his prison sentence in
a Florida county jail. Brown’s book reveals how Epstein was allowed to visit
his office in West Palm Beach for several hours every day. Additionally, during
the hours he was inside the prison, Epstein was given access to a computer. On
at least one occasion, one jail deputy saw Epstein masturbating while he
watched one of his female assistants strip naked for him on Skype.
Toppling dominoes
It was not public knowledge that Epstein and four of his
accomplices named in the secret plea agreement received immunity from all
federal criminal charges until Brown’s explosive expose was published three
years ago.
When the story broke, it led federal prosecutors in New York
to open a fresh criminal investigation, which resulted in Epstein being
subsequently arrested and charged in the summer of 2019. It also led to R.
Alexander Acosta resigning as labor secretary in the Trump administration in
July 2019. Crucially, Brown’s story explained how Acosta had helped cut the
dodgy deal with Epstein’s legal team back in 2008, when he was a federal
prosecutor in Miami.
“When [president] Donald Trump nominated Alex Acosta to be
his labor secretary in early 2017, I immediately recognized Acosta’s name as
being the prosecutor who was responsible for the [non-prosecution] deal,” Brown
says. “And I just wondered, how do [Epstein’s] victims feel about this —
because Acosta was responsible for the Labor Department, which supervises human
trafficking and child labor laws.”
Brown notes that Epstein’s vast fortune (then estimated to
be approximately $500 million) enabled him to hire a so-called legal dream
team, which included lawyers such as Kenneth Starr and Alan Dershowitz, with
the necessary skills, political connections and aggressive tactics to make sure
he could get immunity.
“Dershowitz has his own political connections and knows a
lot of different people in the US criminal justice system,” says Brown. “But he
is going to be watching Maxwell’s [forthcoming] court case closely to see who
she names, and what information she really has.”
Brown’s book also points to accusations by Virginia Giuffre
that subsequently surfaced in connection to the Epstein case, which allegedly
link Dershowitz’s name to Epstein’s sexual pyramid scheme.
Now in her mid-30s, Giuffre is an advocate for sex
trafficking victims and claims Maxwell groomed her when she was still a
teenager to be a sex slave for Maxwell, Epstein, Prince Andrew, and other
prominent men — including Dershowitz.
This story also recently surfaced in a Netflix documentary
called “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich.” It has led Dershowitz to sue Netflix
over what he claims are false allegations made against him in relation to these
alleged crimes.
Other high-profile political figures named in Brown’s book
accused of participating in Epstein’s international sex trafficking operation
include allegations against Israel’s 10th prime minister, Ehud Barak.
Brown says all the accused have the right to be innocent
until proven guilty, though she stresses that given the complex history of the
Epstein case and the cover-ups it involved, these allegations need to be
urgently investigated.
“The FBI, the [US] federal authorities, and law enforcement
authorities in Europe should all be looking at the financial and social
connections Epstein had with all of these people,” says Brown. “Epstein had a
whole group of people helping him to [carry out these crimes].”
“[Epstein] did not do this alone,” she says. “There were
plenty of people that either knew about what Epstein was doing, or even
participated in what he was doing. This was an international sex trafficking
organization that was similar to an organized crime family — so it shouldn’t
just end just with the prosecution of [Ghislaine Maxwell].”
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