Editor’s Note ( Ralph Turchiano) Requested Repost from Jan 2015
NICK O’MALLEY
Last updated 14:50, January 6 2015
Former US president Bill Clinton has been drawn into the scandal surrounding Virginia Roberts’ allegations she was instructed to have sex with Prince Andrew by American financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Court documents show Clinton was one of many high-profile friends of Epstein to visit his private island and fly on his jet, and that Epstein’s phone directory showed he had 21 phone numbers for Clinton or his aides.
The documents suggest no wrong-doing on Clinton’s behalf, but they have set off speculation – particularly on the part of conservative online media – about the potential impact of the scandal on Hillary Clinton’s presumed run for the White House.”Bubba and the Palm Beach Pedophile” screams a headline on the Drudge Report, the conservative blog made famous by its Monica Lewinsky scandal revelations, in a headline today.
Wall Street financier Jeffrey Epstein was convicted in 2008 of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution.
Virginia Roberts, the woman who has alleged Epstein used her as a “sex slave” and instructed her to have sex with Prince Andrew.
“The [flight logs] clearly show that Clinton frequently flew with Epstein aboard his plane, then suddenly stopped – raising the suspicion that the friendship abruptly ended, perhaps because of events related to Epstein’s sexual abuse of children,” says a statement of facts lodged by Roberts’ lawyer in a civil case.
“This information certainly leads one to believe that Clinton might well be a source of relevant information and efforts to obtain discovery from him were reasonably calculated to lead to admissible evidence,” it went on.
In an interview with the Daily Mail in 2011, Roberts, who was 17 when she met Epstein and claims she became his “sex slave”, describes meeting Clinton while with Epstein, but says she was never “lent out” to him, as she says she was to Prince Andrew.
Attorney and law professor Alan Dershowitz denies assaulting Virginia Roberts. He also denies ever meeting her.
The statement of facts lodged last week by Roberts’ lawyers alleges that Epstein’s goal in trafficking minors to rich and powerful people was to “ingratiate himself with them for business, personal, political, and financial gain, as well as to obtain potential blackmail information”.
It is alleged Epstein has photographs of young women engaged in sex acts.
Other court documents – filed in 2011 as part of a related civil dispute – suggest Clinton was one of several high-profile people to have become friends with Epstein.
Buckingham Palace steps up its denial that Prince Andrew had sex with an underage girl and names the victim which the U.K. press say had wanted to remain anonymous. Mana Rabiee reports.
Donald Trump, the Republican developer and TV personality who is considering his own run for the White House in 2016 features in these.
“The message pads confiscated from Epstein’s home indicated that Trump called Epstein’s West Palm Beach mansion on several occasions during the time period most relevant to my client’s complaints,” say the documents.
“Trump was quoted in a Vanity Fair article about Epstein as saying ‘I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”‘
The documents allege that Ghislaine Maxwell, the socialite daughter of the late press magnate Robert Maxwell, introduced the then 15-year-old Roberts to Epstein, and forced her to have sex with them and other powerful associates. Maxell denies the allegations.
The high-profile former Harvard law professor, defence attorney and political commentator Alan Dershowitz, on Monday furiously denied allegations in the new documents that he not only assaulted Roberts, but that he witnessed assaults of her and other young women by Epstein and several co-conspirators.
On NBC’s Today Show on Monday morning Dershowitz denied ever having met Roberts.
“I don’t even know who she is,” he said. “I’ve never seen her, I’ve never met her. Her lawyers have to know this. Her lawyers . . . deliberately and wilfully filed this in a pleading, which they knew I had no opportunity to respond to in court, without any investigation.
“If they had simply investigated the manifest of the airplanes, if they had checked my travel records, if they had asked me, and I could have given them the names of the people who are witnesses, they would know the story is totally false”.
Jeffrey Epstein scandal – a timeline
The explosive new allegations of abuse of Virginia Roberts by Prince Andrew begins with another broader, older, scandal – that the billionaire American financier Jeffrey Epstein procured young women and girls to have sex with and to “loan” to his powerful friends.
It is alleged Epstein hoped to ingratiate himself with them, and even to gather potential blackmail material.
In 2008 Epstein pleaded guilty to one count of solicitation of prostitution and served 13 months of an 18-month sentence after prosecutors in Florida dropped other charges in a plea deal.
The scandal has resurfaced over the past days because when he pleaded guilty to a single charge as part of a deal with prosecutors that gave him immunity from prosecution over more serious federal charges, the prosecutors failed to inform his victims of the deal, in violation of the law.
Two of those victims have been fighting for more than six years to have that immunity rescinded as a result.
Those victims are known as Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2.
Last week Jane Doe 3 – who has revealed herself to be Roberts – and Jane Doe 4 filed a motion to join that lawsuit.
It is in these court documents that new details about allegations against Prince Andrew and Epstein have been revealed.
Roberts alleges she was abused by Epstein – and at times by his friends including Prince Andrew – between 1999 and 2002, when she married an Australian in Thailand and moved to the New South Wales Central Coast.
She returned to the US in 2013.
TIMELINE
1998 – Virginia Roberts meets Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of a disgraced British newspaper tycoon and close associate of Jeffrey Epstein.
1999-2002 – The time period during which Virginia Roberts [Jane Doe #3] claims to have spent as a “sex slave” for Jeffrey Epstein, servicing him and numerous powerful men associated with Epstein.
2000 – Jeffrey Epstein is a guest at a party at Windsor Castle celebrating the birthday of Queen Elizabeth II.
2002 – Virginia Roberts leaves Epstein and marries a man in Thailand.
March 2005 – Florida police investigate Jeffrey Epstein for “sexual battery” following accusations that he paid female minors for sex during 2004 and 2005.
May 2006 – A probable cause affidavit is filed against Epstein by Palm Beach police, accusing him of four counts of unlawful sex with minors and one count of molestation. A grand jury returns with a single charge of solicitation of prostitution.
August 2006 – Epstein pleads not guilty to the charge of solicitation of prostitution.
September 2007 – Famed criminal defense attorney Alan Dershowitz helped Epstein negotiate a then-secret non-prosecution agreement with the US Attorney’s Office, which deferred to the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office for criminal charges.
February 2008 – A $US50 million civil lawsuit is filed against Epstein by an anonymous Virginia woman, stating that in 2004-2005 as a 16-year-old minor she was “recruited to give Epstein a massage” and forced to have sex with him.
March 2008 – A second similar civil action is filed against Epstein, though this and other accusations against Epstein will eventually be settled out of court.
June 2008 – Epstein pleads guilty to solicitation of prostitution, avoiding a trial involving more serious charges. Epstein begins an 18-month sentence in prison, of which he will serve 13 months.
July 2008 – Two lawyers, Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell, filed a Jane Doe lawsuit against the US government, alleging Epstein committed crimes against their clients, including sex trafficking of children by fraud.
July 2008 – The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rules the prosecutors in the case against Epstein failed to ensure that his victims were informed of the plea deal before it was agreed, a violation of the Crime Victims Rights Act.
22 July 2009 – Epstein is released from prison.
February 2011 – Prince Andrew is photographed walking in Central Park in New York with Epstein. Media reports indicate Andrew spent four days at Epstein’s home in New York.
March 2011 – Virginia Roberts, an American woman, speaking to UK newspaper The Daily Mail, claims to have been forced to serve as Epstein’s “sex slave” and accuses him of forcing her to have sex with some of his famous and powerful friends. Though former US President Bill Clinton associated with Epstein, Ms Roberts claims she never had sex with him, nor did she think he had sex with anyone associated with Epstein.
March 2011 – It is revealed that Epstein gave Prince Andrew’s ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, £15,000 to reduce her debts.
July 2011 – Prince Andrew resigns as UK trade envoy amid ferocious criticism over his friendship with Epstein.
30 December 2014 – A court filing in the United States District Court in the Southern District of Florida, filed as part of the civil case against Epstein pending since July 2008, alleges Epstein forced Virginia Roberts to have sex with several men, including Prince Andrew and Alan M. Dershowitz, a famous Harvard Law professor and criminal defence attorney. Epstein made Roberts available to powerful men to ingratiate himself with them and to obtain potential blackmail information, according to the filing.
January 2015 – Speaking to the Daily Mail, Virginia Roberts says Epstein paid her £10,000 to have sex with Prince Andrew while she was still a minor.
January 2015 – Buckingham Palace releases this statement: “It is emphatically denied that the Duke of York had any form of sexual contact or relationship with Virginia Roberts. The allegations made are false and without any foundation.”
– Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/64696813/bill-clinton-drawn-into-prince-andrew-sex-scandal
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