Bill Clinton took repeated trips on the “
Lolita Express“—the private passenger jet owned by billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein—with an actress in softcore porn movies whose name appears in Epstein’s address book under an entry for “massages,” according to flight logbooks obtained by Gawker and
published today for the first time. The logs also show that Clinton shared more than a dozen flights with a woman who federal prosecutors believe procured underage girls to sexually service Epstein and his friends and acted as a “potential co-conspirator” in his crimes.
Epstein
pleaded guilty in 2008 in Florida to one count of soliciting underage girls for sex (and one count of adult solicitation), for which he served just over a year in county jail. But sprawling local, state, and federal investigations into the eccentric investor’s habit of paying teen girls for “massages”—sessions during which he would allegedly penetrate girls with sex toys, demand to be masturbated, and have intercourse—turned up a massive network of victims, including 35 female minors whom federal prosecutors believed he’d sexually abused. He has reportedly settled lawsuits from more than 30 “Jane Doe” victims since 2008; the youngest alleged victim was 12 years old at the time of her abuse.
New court filings are bringing fresh attention to a Florida sex scandal that could become grist for political trouble in the 2016 Presidential campaign.
The new legal filings allege that federal prosecutors in Florida “repeatedly” and “intentionally” violated the rights of dozens of teenage sex abuse victims by secretly negotiating an “extraordinarily lenient” deal with a wealthy Palm Beach financier known in the past to have socialized with powerful business and political figures — including former President
Bill Clinton and current GOP front-runner
Donald Trump.
Prosecutors went to great lengths to keep secret the non-prosecution agreement reached in 2007 with
Jeffrey Epstein, attorneys for the victims allege, “because of the strong objection they would have faced from victims of Epstein’s abuse, and because of the public criticism that would have resulted from allowing a politically-connected billionaire who had sexually abused more than 30 minor girls to escape … with only a county court jail sentence.”
Throughout the negotiations — and for nearly a year after the agreement was signed — the victims were kept in the dark, their attorneys said, strung along as government lawyers promised victims they were still investigating even long after they had cut Epstein an “indulgent” deal.
But with his victims back in court to challenge the government’s handling of the case, there is new attention on Epstein’s ties to two men who find themselves facing the glare of a presidential campaign — Bill Clinton, husband of Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, and Trump, who is currently leading the GOP primary race.
Before any allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced in 2005, Trump and Bill Clinton spoke glowingly of Epstein, and court records have included documents and testimony suggesting both men flew with Epstein on his private jets.
Court files document long-running ties between Epstein and the former president. Bill Clinton flew on at least six trips with Epstein and his entourage in 2002 and 2003 including to international destinations such as Paris, Bangkok and Brunei, according to logs kept by one of Epstein’s pilots.
And as Epstein first faced federal prosecution a few years later, one of his lawyers, Gerald B. Lefcourt, wrote to prosecutors to tout Epstein’s pedigree as “part of the original group that conceived of the
Clinton Global Initiative,” according to a letter attached to Wednesday’s court filing.
Reached Wednesday, Lefcourt said he would not have made that representation to the prosecutors had he not believed it was true. Representatives for both the Clinton Global Initiative and the former President did not immediately respond to ABC News’ requests for comment. According to the organization’s website, CGI was formed in 2005 by former President Clinton “after a lifetime of attending meetings where issues were discussed but no action was taken.”
Whether Trump invokes the scandal in an attempt to spur questions about Clinton’s association with Epstein may depend on his own history with the wealthy investor. In a New York Magazine article in 2002, Trump boasted of his friendship with Epstein: “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen 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,” he told the magazine.
At the heart of this week’s court filings is a deal Epstein reached with federal prosecutors in September of 2007 that spared him from a federal prosecution. After an extensive investigation by the Palm Beach police and the FBI, the Justice Department effectively immunized Epstein for multiple alleged offenses involving underage girls in exchange for his guilty pleas to two comparatively minor sex crimes in Florida state court. And Epstein’s lawyers persuaded the federal government to keep the terms of the agreement secret, according to the court filing by victims’ attorneys Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell.
On the day the deal was signed, an attorney for Epstein sent an email to the federal prosecutor handling the case which read, “Please do whatever you can to keep this from becoming public,” according to an email exchange attached to Wednesday’s filing.....
Victims of billionaire pedophile claim federal prosecutors offered "sweetheart deal"
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