Tag: sex trafficking

Israeli Spy Stayed for Weeks at a Time With Jeffrey Epstein in Manhattan

With the looming end of the U.S. government shutdown amid a deal in the Senate, the House will soon be swearing in Adelita Grijalva to her rightful seat from Arizona, after a historic delay at the hands of Speaker Mike Johnson, taking direction from President Donald Trump, all aimed at blocking her from becoming the final signature needed to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files.

In mid-October, the House Oversight Committee released an interview with former U.S. prosecutor Alex Acosta, who told the panel that—contrary to widespread public reporting—he had never told Steve Bannon that Epstein “belonged to intelligence.” Acosta denied ever discussing Epstein with Bannon, and claimed to have “no knowledge as to whether he was or was not a member of the intelligence community.”

Yet, along with Acosta’s interview, the House panel also released a new cache of documents from Epstein’s estate containing direct evidence of Epstein’s links to Israeli intelligence: Epstein’s personal calendars reveal that a senior Israeli intelligence officer, with personal ties to former CIA Director Leon Panetta, lived at Epstein’s Manhattan apartment for multiple stretches between 2013 and 2016. When cross-referenced with emails leaked from the inbox of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a portrait emerges of Epstein at the nexus of high-ranking intelligence officials in both the U.S. and Israel.

This is the fourth piece in Drop Site’s ongoing series on Jeffrey Epstein’s role in brokering intelligence deals for Israel.

In the first, we exposed Epstein’s role in brokering a security agreement between Israel and Mongolia. In the second, we identified Epstein’s effort to set up a backchannel between Israel and Russia during the Syria civil war. In the third, we showed Epstein’s role as a key facilitator of a security agreement between Israel and the West African nation of Côte d’Ivoire.

Meanwhile, we’re left wondering why the rest of the media, which has demonstrated no lack of excitement when it comes to the saga of Jeffrey Epstein, has all of a sudden lost its reporting capacity, in the face of reams of publicly available newsworthy documents. A question for editors reading this newsletter: What are you doing?

From a place of competition, we’re glad the media are sitting on their collective hands and we’re proud to have broken this series of stories, which give us a glimpse of a world that is often hidden from public view. But it’s also a topic that would benefit from the collective attention of our national media. Here’s hoping some will join in.

Either way, we’ll continue the work, and are grateful for the support of readers who make it possible. If you haven’t yet upgraded your subscription, please consider doing so.

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Comey’s Daughter Reportedly Sought To Cut Deal With Epstein To Smear Trump

The former cellmate of Jeffrey Epstein claimed that James Comey’s prosecutor daughter offered the billionaire pedophile a deal to implicate President Donald Trump.

Maurene Comey, who recently resigned as the walls closed in on her notorious FBI father, began serving in 2016 as assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

That put her front and center in the investigations of Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell after Epstein was arrested in July 2019.

While detained in New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, Epstein was assigned to a cell with Nicholas Tartaglione, a former police officer who was serving time for kidnapping  and quadruple murder.

Tartaglione was convicted of killing a man he suspected of stealing some $250,000 in drug money, as well as his nephews and a family friend who “were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” prosecutors said, according to the New York Post.

During the month that Epstein was incarcerated before his apparent suicide, Tartaglione claimed in a recent pardon application that his cellmate had the opportunity to save his skin by throwing the sitting president under the bus.

“Prosecutors … told Epstein that if he said President Trump was involved with Esptein’s crimes he would walk free. in a petition to be pardoned,” according to the Post, which said it had obtained a copy of the filing.

“Epstein told me that Maurene Comey said that he didn’t have to prove anything, as long as President Trump’s people could not disprove it,” the pardon application added.

“According to Maurene Comey, the FBI were ‘her people, not his [President Trump’s].’”

Maurene Comey’s father was forced out of his role as FBI director roughly two years prior. However, questions have continued to swirl about the dubious loyalties of officials including then-Attorney General William Barr and then-FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Even so, questions about Tartaglione’s credibility may outweigh the suspicions against the Deep State.

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Senators Say Bondi And Patel Are Being ‘Sabotaged’ On Epstein Files; Massie Isn’t Buying It

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., is challenging explanations that FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi lack full control of their agencies nearly a year into the Trump administration, particularly when it comes to their handling of Jeffrey Epstein investigation files.

Sen. Ron Johnson recently suggested that Patel and Bondi face significant internal resistance. While discussing newly released Arctic Frost investigation documents late last month, Johnson emphasized that records came from whistleblowers rather than official channels.

“We need to do everything we can to assist Director Patel and AG Bondi in making sure they have the staff to take control over these agencies,” Johnson said per a report by Blaze Media. “I think they’re being sabotaged within.”

Johnson added that partisan actors remain embedded in both agencies. “Right now I think Kash Patel and Pam Bondi are overwhelmed by all the mess they’re trying to clean up,” he stated. “There’s still partisan actors burrowed in, trying to sabotage their efforts.”

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah., echoed these concerns, writing that Patel and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino are “undoubtedly being sabotaged from within the FBI.”

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House Oversight Committee Summons Former Prince Andrew To Appear Before Congress Over Abuse Claims Against Him

Will Andrew appear before US Congress?

The Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking ring continues to generate almost daily developments.

Among many other avenues of investigation, we have been reporting here on TGP about how the US House Oversight Committee has been enacting a review on the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell investigations and prosecutions.

Today (6), it arises that Andrew Mountbatten Windsor – the disgraced former British Prince – has been summoned to appear before Congress which is investigating abuse claims against him.

The Telegraph reported:

“In a letter sent to the former Duke of York on Thursday, Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee say they believe he may also have crucial information about co-conspirators and enablers of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes.

‘The Oversight Committee will investigate allegations of abuse by Mountbatten Windsor, and will seek information on Epstein’s operations, network, and associates based on the men’s longstanding and well-documented friendship’, they say.”

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Minnesota Cop Who Fabricated a Sex-Trafficking Ring Won’t Be Held Accountable

A police officer had a woman jailed for over two years on false charges in connection with a bogus sex-trafficking ring. But the officer, Heather Weyker, cannot be sued, because a court ruled in July that she was acting under color of federal law.

For years, Weyker, an officer in St. Paul,
Minnesota, gathered evidence, cultivated witnesses, and testified under oath in connection with an interstate sex-trafficking ring run by Somali refugees. She did all that while allegedly fabricating the very ring she was investigating. Her efforts resulted in 30 indictments, nine trials, and exactly zero convictions.

In 2011, Hamdi Mohamud, then just 16 years old, found herself arrested after a woman named Muna Abdulkadir attacked her and her friends at knifepoint. Inconveniently for Mohamud, Abdulkadir was crucial to Weyker’s bogus investigation.

After a call from Abdulkadir—during which she reportedly informed Weyker she had carried out a knife attack and was worried her arrest was imminent—Weyker advised other members of law enforcement
that Abdulkadir was a federal witness. She had information and documentation, Weyker noted, that Mohamud and her friends were out to intimidate Abdulkadir.

“The first part was true, but everything else Weyker said was false,” summarized
Judge David Stras for the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the 8th Circuit. “There was no ‘information’ or ‘documentation’ that anyone was trying to intimidate Abdulkadir. Nevertheless, based on what Weyker told him, Officer [Anthijuan] Beeks arrested Mohamud and the others for witness tampering.”

The government would dismiss those trumped-up charges, but only after Mohamud spent 25 months in custody.

Mohamud sued—and succeeded. A federal court in 2018 declined to give Weyker qualified immunity, finding it was already clearly established at the time of her arrest that Weyker’s alleged misconduct violated the Fourth Amendment.

Two years later, however, Mohamud’s luck soured on appeal. Though the 8th Circuit conceded that Weyker’s sex-trafficking investigation was “plagued with problems from the start” (the trial judge found, for example, that she fabricated information and lied multiple times under oath), the court said she was, in fact, immune.

That wasn’t because she was entitled to qualified immunity. Rather, although Weyker was a St. Paul police officer, she had been cross-deputized on a federal task force to carry out the investigation. That gave her the legal protections afforded to federal law enforcement—a much higher bar for alleged victims to clear.

Lawsuits against federal employees are subject to the Bivens doctrine. Named after the landmark 1971 Supreme Court case Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the ruling allowed a man to sue the federal agents who conducted a warrantless raid on his home and then strip-searched him at a courthouse.

But the Supreme Court has made it almost cartoonishly difficult for plaintiffs to make use of their very good decision. In 2017, the Court ruled in Ziglar v. Abbasi that Bivens claims against federal agents can survive only if they clear a two-pronged test.

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Missing 13-Year-Old Louisiana Girl Found Hidden in Box in Pittsburgh Basement, Suspects Arrested for Kidnapping, Trafficking, and Sexual Assault After Snapchat Grooming

A 13-year-old girl from East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, who went missing in October, has been recovered after being found hidden in a box covered by a sheet in the basement of a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, home.

The teen was last seen at the Greyhound bus station in Baton Rouge after traveling from Columbus, Georgia.

Authorities traced her through online activity, discovering she had been in contact with 26-year-old Ki-Shawn Crumity via Snapchat.

Crumity allegedly lured her by promising to help her get adopted by a trusted adult.

The girl was transported from Baton Rouge to Georgia by 62-year-old Ronald Smith of New Orleans and another man, then placed on a bus to Pittsburgh via Washington, D.C.

At the D.C. bus station, she met a woman who offered assistance, and the group proceeded to Pittsburgh, where the teen stayed in the basement with Crumity and the woman.

According to investigators, Crumity provided the girl with edibles and alcohol and sexually assaulted her at least once or twice a day during the week she was there. He reportedly admitted to knowing she was a runaway and that his actions would get him in trouble.

On Friday, the FBI executed a search warrant with a SWAT team at the Davis Avenue home, discovering the girl in the basement box.

The Independent reports, “The girl later told authorities that being at the hospital after her rescue was ‘the safest she ever felt,’ according to the complaint.”

Crumity was arrested on-site and faces charges including trafficking in individuals, statutory sexual assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sexual assault, and selling or furnishing alcohol to a minor. He is being held without bond at Allegheny County Jail.

Smith was arrested in Columbus, Georgia, on charges of simple kidnapping and contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile.

Authorities indicated that additional arrests and charges are pending.

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Kids recruited from foster care are for sale at LA’s sex-trafficking corridor ‘The Blade’ — and cops are powerless to stop it

Anyone who wants to have sex with a young girl in Los Angeles can drive to “the Blade,” a notorious red-light district where 12-year-olds are openly walking the streets — and cops are all but powerless to thwart the disgusting pedo bazaar.

The children line up along a 2-mile section of Figueroa Street — a k a “the Kiddle Stroll” — clad in next to nothing to indulge in their johns’ sickest fantasies for around a hundred bucks.

Many of the girls were recruited from the foster-care system after being seduced on social media, authorities said.

Occasionally, they do their rounds with bruises and split lips — souvenirs from violent pimps who savagely beat them when they step out of line or don’t meet their quota.

Earlier last year, a group of local and federal law enforcement agencies launched an initiative to crack down on the trafficking and rescue the victims.

In August, the city attorney’s office announced that 190 traffickers had been arrested and 200 children rescued, some as young as 12.

Yet a trafficking victim interviewed by the New York Times said “the Blade” is now busier than ever before, with young girls being shipped in from across the country.

The growing throngs of exploited children inspired a nickname for the district from the LA city attorney: “Kiddie Stroll.”

At the state level, new laws have hampered authorities’ ability to identify victims and prosecute their traffickers.

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Newsom’s and Weiner’s vile law ties cops’ hands on child sex-trafficking

California’s statehouse Democrats called their 2022 law the “Safer Streets for All Act.” 

Gov. Gavin Newsom gladly signed Senate Bill 357 sponsored by radical state Sen. Scott Wiener, and his ACLU pals hailed it as a bill that “will move California one step closer to acknowledging sex workers as deserving of full dignity and respect.”

But its effect has been the opposite for vulnerable children without functioning families  — who end up coerced into lives of prostitution by sex-traffickers and the pimp trade is flourishing.

The law prohibits any enforcement action against loitering with intent of commiting prostitution, supposedly because cops are racist and like to target black and trans people.

The real effect is that cops can’t catch sex-traffickers of children anymore. Eleven-year old girls just line the streets of Los Angeles openly now, waiting to be bought and sold like meat for perverts, and cops can’t do a thing to stop them.

That’s what was found by New York Times reporter Emily Baumgaertner Nunn, in a long investigative report about child sex-trafficking on Los Angeles’s Figueroa Street, in a stretch appropriately called ‘The Blade.’

She writes of a pitiful young teenage prostitute she calls ‘Ana’ whose mother was a drunk, who got bounced around foster care homes, who ran away, and who was picked up by a pimp she met on Instagram, at the tender age of 13.

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Epstein: Dirty Secrets Emerge From a Painful Book — and the Powerful Squirm

The Jeffrey Epstein story ebbs and flows in the national conversation, sometimes seeming a bit less worthy of our attention compared to other urgent matters, only to revive as hot stuff with new developments.

The latest in an endless series of things we need to know about is the posthumously published memoir of Virginia Roberts Giuffre, whose torment by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell began in 2000 and ended in 2002. During that time, she was forced to perform unspeakable acts with the two of them, and others — she said she was “passed around like a platter of fruit.”

To get her to comply and never reveal these horrors, all Epstein had to do was let her know he knew where her little brother went to school. (And he showed her a photo proving it.)

I find this claim believable because someone I know recounted a story from one of his attorneys in a business-related lawsuit against Epstein. He described how during a phone conversation, Epstein mentioned having seen the attorney’s children crossing the street, and warned him to be extra careful so nothing would happen to them.

Back to Giuffre’’s claims: Epstein also bragged that he “owned the Palm Beach police department.” (Manipulating Giuffre was easy: At the age of seven, she had already been molested by a family friend.) Giuffre sued Maxwell and Epstein and became an advocate for other survivors. She committed suicide in April, at the age of 41.

Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice seems to be mentioned all over the place — The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, PBS, CBS, etc. — and it has got to be one of Donald Trump’s worst nightmares, assuming he can even fall asleep.

Because it’s bound to make more and more people demand to see the Epstein files. And to see just how he — Trump — is mentioned.

From the grave, Giuffre powerfully challenges the idea that all those famous people hanging out with Epstein had no inkling what he was up to:

Don’t be fooled by those in Epstein’s circle who say they didn’t know what he was doing. Epstein not only didn’t hide what was happening, he took a certain glee in making people watch. And people did watch — scientists, fundraisers from the Ivy League and other heralded institutions, titans of industry. They watched and they didn’t care.

And this description from on what she had to put up with, and from what sort of men:

[C]hoking, beating and bloodying from a former prime minister, whom she refused to name because “I fear that this man will seek to hurt me if I say his name here.”

As you probably already know, she named, and sued, Prince Andrew. (Note: Giuffre observed no encounters with Donald Trump, but others say they have.)

Related: How Epstein Got Rich: Clue Buried in Lawsuit? – WhoWhatWhy

Whether you think the Jeffrey Epstein story matters or not, the Republicans certainly think it does.

Their most recent effort, in a long series of efforts, to block release of the government’s files on the matter is to indefinitely avoid seating the newest member of the US House, Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ). That’s because she represents the final discharge petition signature needed to force a House vote on releasing those records.

The Grijalva stunt involves House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) claiming that, hey, there’s no reason for the delay and, um, I gotta go.

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Epstein ‘bankrolled Sarah Ferguson for 15 years’ and she ‘took daughters to celebrate his release from prison in US’ astonishing emails claim

Jeffrey Epstein secretly bankrolled Sarah Ferguson for 15 years, astonishing new emails claim.

The convicted paedophile complained to friends about the disgraced duchess’s scrounging ways in messages that suggest his financial support went far beyond the £15,000 she admitted taking from him.

In the previously unseen emails, Epstein reveals Fergie was so desperate to cosy up to him that ‘she was the first to celebrate’ his release from jail ‘with her two daughters in tow’. Princess Beatrice would have been 20 at the time and Eugenie 19, the same age as many of his victims.

The shocking claims are contained in a huge tranche of documents under review by the US Congress. They are set to be released once they have been redacted to protect the identity of hundreds of young girls Epstein raped and sexually abused.

The sordid nature of Fergie’s relationship with the paedophile and the chummy tone of their correspondence makes sickening reading that will repulse the sex offender’s many victims.

Emails seen by The Mail on Sunday show: 

  • Fergie begged to borrow $50,000 to $100,000 to help with ‘small bills’;
  • She asked to visit Epstein’s private island, joking whether her financial woes made it ‘unavailable to bankrupts?’
  • Epstein paid off debts the duchess owed a former employee but became angry when she failed to pay him back as promised;
  • While disavowing Epstein in public, Fergie kept up contact and let him help set up a charity for her;
  • Epstein brazenly gave Fergie ‘talking points’ before she was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. 

Tonight a well-placed source said: ‘Sarah and Prince Andrew have always maintained they distanced themselves from Epstein after his conviction for child prostitution. In fact, it was Epstein who ended up dumping them. He got sick and tired of Sarah constantly asking him for money.

‘She borrowed far more money off him than has ever come out. In public she said one thing but in private she was always holding out the begging bowl.’

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