Eric Weinstein Takes Flamethrower To NYT

I'll be perfectly honest: Until an hour or so ago I'd never heard of Eric Weinstein. That was when I read Zerohedge:

NYT 'Chief Threat To Democracy': Eric Weinstein Takes Flamethrower To Paper Of Record After Bari Weiss Quits

The 'paper of record' the 'Chief Threat to Democracy?' There are certainly a lot of candidates for that honor, but I suppose that--at a minimum--the NYT fits into the Top Ten or so.

Zerohedge gives a summary of Weinstein's twitter rant, and you can read the whole thing in the original here. Or try both. The unrolled twitter thread makes a good read. All I want to do here is draw attention to three stories that Weinstein says Weiss would have liked to have covered but couldn't. Check this out:

This is the paper in 2016 that couldnt be interested in the story that millions of Americans were likely lying to pollsters about Donald Trump.

The paper refusing to ask the CIA/FBI if Epstein was Intelligence related.

The paper that can’t report that it seeks race rioting:

Can we all agree that those are three big stories? But that second one ...

Recall that Alex Acosta claims--and has never been contradicted--that he was told from way high up the Deep State feed chain that the whole Epstein case was national security involved:

Acosta later said he offered a lenient plea deal because he was told that Epstein "belonged to intelligence", was "above his pay grade," and to "leave it alone".

Today in the NYPost there was a story about how Ghislaine Maxwell is wearing suicide proof paper garments and is being continually moved from one cell to another because her keepers are afraid of assassins. It's almost as if someone way high up (hello, Bill Barr!) suspects Epstein didn't actually suicide.

My point is not to dredge up stuff that we've already discussed. The point is that if someone as Establishment connected as Bari Weiss is willing to entertain the idea that Epstein's underage sex op was "intelligence related", then, yeah, we should all be thinking about that, too.

And the real point of all this is that what's currently playing out in our national life runs very deep. Very deep.

Dueling Narratives On Acosta's Ouster

Today's WSJ lead editorial bemoans the fact that Trump has "lost" another cabinet secretary--and doesn't even seem to care: Acosta Goes Over the Side--Trump loses another Cabinet Secretary. He doesn’t seem to mind. How will he ever find a qualified replacement?

Mr. Trump needs all the talent he can get since few people will want to join his team with only 18 months left in his term. Why take the risk if you know you’ll be sent over the side as soon as Democrats and the media decide to make you a political target?

Paul Mirengoff has a somewhat different perspective. Mirengoff, coming from a labor law perspective, has been a relentless critic of Acosta--for his handling of the Epstein case but also for his go along to get along approach to running the Department of Labor. From that perspective, he suggests that it's good riddance--Alex Acosta and the story that couldn’t be told. Mirengoff quotes a WaPo story that states point blank that Acosta's real ambition was to get a federal judgeship, and that he was pursuing a strategy of placating labor leaders and Congressional Dems to that end:

Acosta, who aspired to be a federal judge, had a strategy as secretary to play a safe, inside game running the Labor Department, according to multiple current and former administration officials. He aimed for a balance in his approach to labor policy that would satisfy the White House — while also placating union leaders and Democrats on Capitol Hill.

And so, says Mirengoff,

Was Epstein An Intel Guy? Who To Ask

In an informative article at Epoch Times, Wilson Miller identifies four officials at "Main Justice," DoJ HQ so to speak, who were involved in the Epstein plea deal: Justice Department Sat on Mountain of Epstein Evidence for 10 Years. I'll keep this brief, and start from the last two sentences:

And why did main Justice have such an interest in a South Florida child sex offender? 

This quote from Acosta, cited in a July 9, 2019, Daily Beast article, may provide the answer: “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.”

 Obviously, if we want to know whether Alex Acosta is telling the truth, there must be people who were at Main Justice who can tell us. Miller has identified those people:

Court records show that post-plea-deal decisions went up to Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip, who, according to one former DOJ official, has a stellar reputation. Filip was informed of reasons to approve the continued prosecution of Epstein if he didn’t comply with the non-prosecution agreement. Judge Marra noted that Filip reviewed the Epstein matter and determined that federal prosecution of Epstein was appropriate if he did not “comply with the terms and conditions of the agreement.” 

Another high-level Department of Justice official who had his fingerprints on the case is Andrew Oosterbaan, then-chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section. A privilege log filed on June 23, 2015, references several emails from 2007 between the Florida federal prosecutors and Oosterbaan regarding an “Epstein meeting” and “changes to the draft indictment and status of plea negotiations.” 

The same document shows emails from 2008 with Oosterbaan concerning a “continued delay in presenting case to grand jury due to failure to receive decision from D.C., the status of grand jury presentation and ongoing investigation” and a “meeting in DC” concerning the case. 

Additionally, these records appear to show Epstein’s attorneys reached out to Andy Lourie in May 2007 to arrange a meeting to discuss the Epstein investigation. Lourie was the acting chief of the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division in Washington in 2006, before becoming the acting principal deputy assistant attorney general and chief of staff to the Criminal Division by 2007. In 2007, he was also an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida. Lourie was kept in the loop on possible federal coercion and enticement charges, proposed changes to the indictment, “finalizing details with State Attorney’s Office,” and “final revisions to indictment package.” 

There are also notations of 2007 emails from Florida federal prosecutors to Myesha Braden, who was serving as a trial attorney for the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the DOJ’s Criminal Division, regarding securing a pre-indictment consultation contract. This correspondence took place months before Epstein signed the non-prosecution agreement. 

In other words, Main Justice was well-informed with the investigation and status of the case.

Some or all of these people know what the real story is.

ADDENDUM: Here's a link to a Fox article with video interviews with two top flight lawyers, including Paul Cassell, attorney for the victims.

Troubling Questions Re Alex Acosta

There are lots of important, unanswered questions about the federal government's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. Questions like, Who--names, please--in the government was really responsible for pulling the strings for him? Was he really involved in "intel" work--and, if so, for whom? What seems apparent, at this point, is that Acosta did not tell the full story at his press conference yesterday. I'm perfectly willing to believe that Acosta was pressured by persons above him to do the deal he did with Epstein, but to get to that point we do need to know the full facts. We're not there yet.

In what follows, I'll avoid the details of the Crime Victims' Rights Act (CVRA). For our purposes here, all we need to understand is that, while Acosta's US Attorney's Office did send a letter to the victims explaining their rights, as required by the CVRA, they failed to further inform them of the steps that were being taken as they happened. A federal judge has granted summary judgment to the victims--the legal version of a declaration that this was a no-brainer--holding that this did in fact violate their rights.

With that preliminary ...

I've just read a Miami Herald article from March, 2019: Jeffrey Epstein prosecutor was previously rebuked for handling of a child sex case. The article, among other troubling details, recounts the fact that the Assistant US Attorney (AUSA) who handled the Epstein case, A. Marie Villafaña, had been rebuked in the most severe terms by a federal judge less than a year previously for withholding information in another case of sexual abuse of a minor girl. Importantly, not only was Villafaña accused in writing by the judge of an "intentional and/or serious lapse in judgment," but the judge made a point of sending a copy of his order to Acosta, the then US Attorney.

Without delving too deeply into the facts, here's what the issue was. The case involved a 19 year old male who had seduced a 14 year old girl. At sentencing Villafaña proposed a sentence that was close to the minimum, and also suggested psychological treatment. However, the mother of the victim, in speaking before the judge at the hearing, alluded to the fact that the defendant had engaged in similar behavior with girls in Texas and California. This had not been disclosed to the judge previously, who promptly sentenced the defendant to twice what Villafaña had suggested.

But the judge wasn't done. He reviewed the full case and, three months later, issued an order in which he wrote:

Briefly Noted: Barr's Non-Recusal, Epstein The Intel Guy, Acosta

Yesterday I featured Monica Showalter's explanation for Barr's recusal from the Epstein case in the SDNY. Later in the day commenter Brad Crawford pointed out that word had it that Barr had only recused from the Miami case, not from the SDNY case. While I haven't seen anything official, this seems to be accepted as of now. Showalter has a take on this, too: On Epstein case, Barr gives Democrats a new reason to get the willies. It appears that Barr will still be riding heard on the SDNY, and we can all agree that that's probably a Good Thing.

Also yesterday, in Epstein, Acosta, Trump--And The Russia Hoax! I quoted investigative reporter to this fascinating effect:

Epstein’s name, I was told, had been raised by the Trump transition team when Alexander Acosta, the former U.S. attorney in Miami who’d infamously cut Epstein a non-prosecution plea deal back in 2007, was being interviewed for the job of labor secretary. The plea deal put a hard stop to a separate federal investigation of alleged sex crimes with minors and trafficking. 

“Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?” Acosta had been asked. Acosta had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he’d had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” he told his interviewers in the Trump transition, who evidently thought that was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta. 

The obvious question is: "Intelligence"? What "Intelligence"? A number of talking heads have hinted at the possibility that Epstein was simply a front for bigger players. Zerohedge has carried two blogs by Mike Krieger that address that question. This morning in Bombshell: Alex Acosta Reportedly Claimed Jeffrey Epstein "Belonged To Intelligence" Krieger sets the table, so to speak:

it appeared his real job was to run a blackmail operation to ensnare some of the most wealthy and powerful people on earth. ... he was collecting this priceless information on behalf of a third party ...

Krieger is referring here to a previous blog in which he shares some "extremely bizarre facts about Jeffrey Epstein and the people around him." You can find that here: The Jeffrey Epstein Rabbit Hole Goes a Lot Deeper Than You Think. After sharing that information Krieger concludes:

It looks as if Jeffrey Epstein’s real job was to obtain blackmail on some of the world’s most wealthy and powerful players, and in this sense he was a huge success. The much bigger question is whether he was doing this primarily for himself or if he was a frontman for other players to whom such information would be priceless. 

The reason I put this together is to expose as many people as possible to this bizarre information. I hope journalists and criminal investigators dig deep into all this stuff (and more) in order to truly get to the bottom of who Jeffrey Epstein is, where his money came from and who, if anyone, he answers to. 

There may be a lot more here than meets the eye.

The current CW on Epstein, at least among the Smart People, is that there is no reasonable or even remotely plausible explanation for how he got his money. None at all. So from that standpoint, and taking Acosta's statement into account, Krieger's viewpoint seems, well, entirely reasonable in the circumstances. Read Krieger's Rabbit Hole blog entry for details.

Finally, Alex Acosta. Dems and the Powerline bloggers have been out for Acosta's scalp, but commenters Forbes and Yancey Ward--and I, too--beg to differ (see the comments at Epstein: Sphere Of Influence). It's not that Acosta covered himself with credit or merit, but he simply wasn't the person controlling events. To make him the scapegoat risks missing the forest for a single tree. Today the WSJ rides to Acosta's defense, behind their subscription wall. First in their lead editorial, Prosecuting Alex Acosta--Democrats try to blame the Labor Secretary for Jeffrey Epstein, and then through Holman Jenkins' article, Trump and the Sex Offender--Guess why the press makes a villain out of Jeffrey Epstein’s only successful prosecutor?

The editorial points out:

There’s nothing in the Epstein indictment to indicate that Mr. Acosta abused his power or violated his oath as U.S. Attorney. By all publicly available evidence, Mr. Acosta acted honorably and drove a tougher deal with Mr. Epstein than state prosecutors and some lower-level U.S. prosecutors sought. 

The non-prosecution agreement required Mr. Epstein to cop to two state felonies that led to a 13-month jail sentence, register for life as a sex offender and pay restitution to victims as well as their attorney fees. Mr. Schumer’s friend, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., is the prosecutor who in 2011 sought to downgrade Mr. Epstein’s sex-offender status in New York where he was required to register because he had a home. 

According to documents unsealed in a related federal case, low-level federal prosecutors initially sought to have Mr. Epstein plead guilty to a misdemeanor. Former state attorney Barry Krischer for unclear reasons also pushed for lighter charges. 

But Mr. Acosta pushed back against Mr. Epstein’s lawyers.

... 

Mr. Acosta also sought to ensure that victims’ rights were respected. “We intend to provide victims with notice of the federal resolution, as required by law,” Mr. Acosta wrote to a defense attorney who objected to victims being notified of the non-prosecution agreement.

The editors conclude:

Democrats shouldn’t get away with implying that Mr. Acosta is guilty of prosecutorial abuses without evidence. President Trump shouldn’t throw Mr. Acosta to the same mob that has indicted him without evidence of colluding with the Russians.

Jenkins is making much the same point, but does so by taking on the Miami Herald's virtue signaling (despite their admittedly excellent reporting):

A much-cited story in the Miami Herald last November is headlined “How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime.” The paper thereby invokes a previously unknown form of retroactive quantum action at a distance, since Alexander Acosta’s actions as a U.S. attorney in Florida in 2007 could not have been premised on Mr. Trump being president a decade later. 

The headline is also misleading. In fact, the Herald’s 5,000-word exposé tells us very little about the reasons and circumstances behind the 2008 plea deal in which Mr. Epstein agreed to plead guilty to two felonies, serve an 18-month jail sentence, pay restitution to certain victims, and accept designation for life as a registered sex offender. 

Instead, the paper tells us what its own sources are willing to say now about Mr. Epstein more than a decade after the prosecution. What a newspaper can report in 2018 and what a prosecutor can prove in 2007 are two very different things. A fact the Herald also should have made plain: It was precisely Mr. Epstein’s conviction at the hands of Mr. Acosta that helped fuel the filing of civil lawsuits and emergence of newly declared victims that became the basis for the Herald’s own reporting. 

Making an even bigger joke of the paper’s positioning of Mr. Acosta as Mr. Epstein’s protector is this glaring fact: It wasn’t Mr. Acosta but New York County’s district attorney—a member of the city’s ruling Democratic elite, with the illustrious name of Cyrus Vance Jr.—who in 2011 sought to undo Mr. Acosta’s work by relieving Mr. Epstein of his Level 3 sex offender status in New York state. 

But then Mr. Vance is not a member of the Trump administration.

And Jenkins concludes with this just observation:

Would the Herald even have invested in reporting the Epstein story if it couldn’t also have flounced up an anti-Trump angle? 

Yes, it’s been rough couple of decades for the newspaper business. At the kindest, the Herald should have had the confidence to rest its claim to public attention on what it had to reveal about Mr. Epstein’s behavior rather than trying so pathetically to annex its reporting to an au courant anti-Trump narrative.

Epstein, Acosta, Trump--And The Russia Hoax!

Vicky Ward, who is one of the reporters who has been most involved in the Epstein investigation over the years, has an informative article today: Jeffrey Epstein’s Sick Story Played Out for Years in Plain Sight--How did the New York financier stay nearly untouchable for decades? Vicky Ward—who has reported extensively on Epstein, and on efforts to rehabilitate him—finds out what’s changed.

Ward begins here article with this arresting sentence:

A couple of years ago, I was interviewing a former senior White House official when the name Jeffrey Epstein came up. 

Let's see. The interview took place "a couple of years ago," and the person interviewed was "a former senior White House official." That takes us back into the Obama administration. Ward was talking to a former senior official in the Obama White House. And what did that former senior official in the Obama White House have to say about Epstein, at a time when stories of the Lolita Express and Orgy Island were common currency? This:

... this person assured me that the New York financier was no serious harm to anyone. He was a good guy. A charming guy. Useful, too. He knew a lot of rich Arabs, including the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and, further, he had clever ideas about creating bond issues for them. “OK, so he has a girl problem,” this person threw on, almost as an afterthought.

You can take that as the official Democrat establishment take on Epstein.

Move forward a few years. Alex Acosta, who was the US Attorney in Miami when the non-prosecution deal was cut with Epstein, is interviewing for the job of Secretary of Labor:

Epstein’s name, I was told, had been raised by the Trump transition team when Alexander Acosta, the former U.S. attorney in Miami who’d infamously cut Epstein a non-prosecution plea deal back in 2007, was being interviewed for the job of labor secretary. The plea deal put a hard stop to a separate federal investigation of alleged sex crimes with minors and trafficking. 

“Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?” Acosta had been asked. Acosta had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he’d had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” he told his interviewers in the Trump transition, who evidently thought that was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta. 

I think what this translates to is that Acosta signed off on a deal that had actually been negotiated by Ken Starr and Jay Lefkowitz, at the direction of Alberto Gonzalez, with the approval of George W. Bush, because ... Hillary Clinton.

UPDATED: OIG, OPR, And The Epstein Case

Readers may have noticed references to internal disciplinary matters at DoJ (including the FBI) being handled by both OIG under current IG Michael Horowitz as well as OPR (the Office of Professional Responsibility). I've never looked into the division of responsibilities between the two offices before, but we've seen this in the Russia Hoax and it has arisen once more in the Epstein Case. Wikipedia has a succinct explanation of the division of responsibilities--OPR investigates DoJ attorneys, OIG investigates the peons, non-attorneys:

The Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is part of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) responsible for investigating attorneys employed by the DOJ who have been accused of misconduct or crimes in their professional functions. The OPR promulgates independent standards of ethical and criminal conduct for DOJ attorneys, while the DOJ's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has jurisdiction of non-attorney DOJ employees. Corey Amundson became the head of the Office of Professional Responsibility in September, 2018.

The important point is this: OIG, while part of the DoJ, has an independent basis in federal law. OPR has no statutorily independent basis. That doesn't mean that OIG can't be pressured or interfered with by an AG or his DAG (think: Rod Rosenstein), but the OIG has a stronger ground for independent action that steps on political toes than does OPR. Looking forward, the names of Mueller and his entire team of attorneys arise. This helps explain the regular calls for the investigation of the Russia Hoax to be turned over to a US Attorney who can empanel a Grand Jury. Oh, wait--John Durham!

This division has long been a source of of accusations of favorable/lenient treatment of attorneys, often done secretly, i.e., with no public release of findings. This was famously the case with Andrew Weissmann, as recounted by Sidney Powell (Michael Flynn's new lawyer, author of Licensed To Lie). This also suggests that Bruce Ohr's case, for example, is being handled by OPR, as would then probably be the case with all the other DoJ attorneys (prominently David Laufmann and Rod Rosenstein) involved in the Russia Case, including FBI attorneys such as James Baker, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Trisha Anderson, Lisa Page, and quite a few more. I may be missing some jurisdictional nuances here, but we need to be aware of this.

Mueller's Honor

This will be quite brief. You can read commentary on this story from the always excellent Don Surber here: FBI let billionaire rape girls, and by Paul Mirengoff--who has been on Alex Acosta's case--here: Federal Judge: Acosta broke the law in Jeffrey Epstein’s case.

You can get a better overview by doing some pretty elementary searches, but for a quick and dirty yet still good overview go to Techno Fog's twitter feed. Start with the tweet that Techno Fog has had pinned at the top of his feed since May 24, 2018--pasted in below--and then keep reading. You thought Mueller had his hands full with the Russia Hoax? You thought Bill Barr had a plateful of business already?