Background Briefing: July 8, 2019
The Previously Untouchable Epstein’s Court Appearance Today
We begin with the court appearance in Manhattan today of the convicted pedophile and well-connected money manager Jeffrey Epstein who is facing up to 45 years in prison on charges of sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minors. Adam Klasfeld, a reporter for Courthouse News Service where his latest article is “NY Prosecutors Charge Jeffrey Epstein With Sex Trafficking”, joins us to discuss the appearance in court of the previously untouchable billionaire with powerful friend including President Trump, Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew, who was dressed in a navy prison jumpsuit and wearing fluorescent orange sneakers as he plead not guilty. We will look into the earlier sweetheart deal negotiated by his defense attorneys Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz that Epstein got from the U.S. Attorney in Florida, now Secretary of Labor Acosta, which has since come under scrutiny and is likely to attract more attention now because Epstein’s current lawyers are claiming the unusually lenient non-prosecution agreement Acosta gave Epstein would be the centerpiece of their defense against these new charges. Also Epstein’s powerful friends like Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew who took numerous flights to Epstein’s private island on his plane known as the “Lolita Express” are likely to be back in the spotlight along with Donald Trump who once described Epstein as a “Terrific guy, He’s a lot of fun to be with. It’s even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side”.
The Legal Jeopardy Epstein Finds Himself In
Then we get a legal analysis of the jeopardy Epstein finds himself in, faced with U.S. Attorneys from the Southern District of New York (including the daughter of the FBI Director Trump fired James Comey) who have a 90% success rate in prosecutions and appear to have a trove of evidence seized from Epstein’s $77 million Manhattan townhouse including lewd photos and DVD’s of minors who Epstein labeled and cataloged, along with a massage table in a private room equipped with sexual paraphernalia. Elie Honig, who served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York for 8 years and is now a legal analyst at CNN where he has an op-ed, “The next big question about Jeffrey Epstein”, joins us.
Jared Kushner’s Shadow Foreign Policy
Then finally we speak with Mohamad Bazzi, a journalism professor at New York University and a former Middle East bureau chief at Newsday about his article at The Guardian “The troubling overlap between Jared Kushner’s business interests and U.S. foreign policy”. He joins us to explore the extent to which the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has been conducting a shadow foreign policy while making financial deals on the side for his family’s troubled real estate company with foreign despots and dictators eager to curry favor with the Trump Administration.