Tag: corruption

The false hope of Ghislaine Maxwell’s arrest

With the July 2 arrest and indictment of Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime partner of Jeffrey Epstein, the victims of their child sex-trafficking ring are once again being led to believe that the truth about the network of high-profile abusers and protectors will finally be revealed.

One victim, Maria Farmer, first reported Epstein’s crimes to the FBI in the 1990s, but her reports were ignored. Maria is currently battling two forms of cancer. The arrest of Maxwell has given her renewed hope. “When you wait a quarter of a century for something, it’s pretty exciting when it happens,” she told the Daily Beast through happy tears. “I really feel hopeful that . . . maybe they’ll go down the list of coconspirators.” Another victim, Jennifer Araoz, said, “Maxwell was the center of that sex trafficking ring.” Her arrest “means some justice for survivors can exist.” Courtney Wild said that the arrest of Maxwell “gives me more confidence in our system.”

In a previous column, I described how the federal government has covered up for Epstein and Maxwell and their coconspirators. Back in 2005, more than 30 child victims, some as young as 14 when they were recruited to become sex slaves for Epstein and his guests, were tricked into cooperating with the FBI, based on the promise that the U.S. attorney’s office in south Florida intended to prosecute the Epstein-Maxwell child sex ring. Instead, the lead prosecutor on the case, Alexander Acosta, double-crossed the victims and entered into a secret and illegal deal to grant immunity to Epstein and all his “potential coconspirators.” Acosta later explained that he cut the nonprosecution deal with 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.”

The problem for the victims is that a deep dive into the Epstein-Maxwell network would implicate not just powerful men like Bill Clinton, who took at least 26 trips on Epstein’s private jet—nicknamed the Lolita Express—but also untouchable U.S. intelligence officials like Michael Hayden, who was CIA director in 2007 when Acosta was told to “leave [Epstein] alone.”

Thus, the government has gone to great lengths to avoid any detailed investigations into the criminal enterprise. Then in November 2018, a reporter from the Miami Herald embarrassed the government by identifying about 80 victims of the sex ring and by telling the story of how the victims were double-crossed by Acosta’s office in 2007. In response to this series in the Herald, federal agents arrested Epstein last summer and charged him under the same indictment that had been drafted and shelved a decade before.

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Vaccine Execs Rake In $1 Billion In Stock Sales As Positive Headlines Boost Shares

With the race to find a vaccine for COVID-19 in full effect, biotech executives and other insiders from at least 11 companies have made hand over fist – raking in over $1 billion in stock sales after announcing positive developments, according to the New York Times.

In some cases, company insiders are profiting from regularly scheduled compensation or automatic stock trades. But in other situations, senior officials appear to be pouncing on opportunities to cash out while their stock prices are sky high. And some companies have awarded stock options to executives shortly before market-moving announcements about their vaccine progress. -NYT

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REP. LORI TRAHAN LIED ABOUT CAMPAIGN FUNDS. THE HOUSE ETHICS COMMITTEE CLEARED HER ANYWAY.

LAST DECEMBER, the independent Office of Congressional Ethics released a report concluding that there was “substantial reason” to believe that freshman Rep. Lori Trahan had broken campaign finance laws in the final days of her tight Democratic primary in Massachusetts. OCE then kicked it over to the House Ethics Committee, which is run by a bipartisan panel of Trahan’s colleagues. They’ve now concluded their own investigation, with a starkly different finding: Trahan was cleared — despite not having cooperated with the OCE investigation nor providing key documentation to support her claims.

In 2018, Trahan faced a hotly competitive primary for Massachusetts’ 3rd Congressional District, in the Boston suburbs, which she ultimately won by just 155 votes. In the final days of the campaign, Trahan had deposited $300,000 into her coffers that was classified as a personal loan, which she used to launch a TV blitz that, given the narrow margin, most likely swung the election.

By the time Trahan filed a personal financial statement, her records suggested that she did not have enough assets to have been able to make the loan to her campaign, as revealed by a Boston Globe investigation. Where, then, had the money come from?

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