Tuesday, July 29, 2025
-Bill Crane-
That single solicitation charge in the Florida Epstein case does not even address the victim’s age of 14 at the time of the crime. Epstein spends ONE night in the Palm Beach County Jail and is released the next day on a $3,000 bond. The case drags on, until 2007, when Epstein suddenly signs a non-prosecution agreement, called by many legal experts the “Deal of the Century.” He pleas to two felony prostitution related charges, and voluntarily registers as a sex offender. NONE of Epstein’s victims were even alerted to plea negotiations being underway.
Instead of decades in prison, Epstein is sentenced to 18 months in the Palm Beach County Jail. He actually serves only 13 months in a private wing of the jail reserved for snitches and others under witness protection. He would spend only his nights in jail, as part of a work-release program six days a week for 12 hours each day. He is out by 2009, completing his sentence and allowed to travel anywhere while his probation and ‘house arrest’ continues, as long as he returns home within 24 hours. Epstein shifts his world and travels to his private island compound, Little St. James in the U.S. Virgin Islands. His private jet, a 727 and other aircraft can be from almost any airport in south Florida to St. Thomas in a matter of hours.
Now a convicted felon and registered sex offender, VIP visitors to what the locals refer to as “Lolita Island,” only increase. The Bush Administration’s U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Alex Acosta, became roundly criticized for cutting the federal plea deal with only state penalties and federal prosecution immunity. Acosta later became Labor Secretary for President Donald Trump during his first term, and then resigns in 2019 over continuing criticism and the controversy surrounding his handling of the Epstein case. Acosta was reappointed Labor Secretary during Trump’s current and second term.
In 2018, later federal and state sex trafficking charges by the Northern District of New York were much more serious, though Epstein is found to have committed suicide before going to trial in 2019. The voluminous evidence of that second case includes private flight manifests, phone records and thousands of hours of videotapes shown to a Grand Jury in New York and is reportedly quite damning. That evidence points to there being as many as 1000 victims sex trafficked and transported to Epstein’s island, along with hundreds of VIP guests. We can’t assume everyone who flew to the island is also a predator or pedophile, but the folks who got on that jet (per the manifests) and stayed for several days or longer didn’t go to work on their tans or play bridge. Visits by Bill Gates to the island were supposedly an issue in his later divorce from philanthropist Melinda Gates.
I am not a conspiracy theorist, but like Epstein’s confidante and procurer, Ghislaine Maxwell, I do not believe he committed suicide. Most narcissists love themselves too much for self-harm. Whether Trump is protecting himself or other powerful friends, I suspect he will cave and starting with those New York Grand Jury presentment files, the facts will eventually come into the light.
Those horrific videos can be blurred so that the victims faces are not identifiable. Yes, those tapes are child pornography, but they will also show the faces of the pedophiles and predators. Only Ghislaine Maxwell is sitting in prison for 20 years for all those crimes, and she is ready to tell all. Bring her before the U.S. House for testimony, she has little to gain and nothing to lose at this point, other than perhaps a shorter time served. She meets this week for former Trump defense attorney and Deputy Director of the U.S. Justice Department in Tallahassee.
Trump began using Epstein as a campaign issue referencing Bill Clinton’s friendship with Epstein, which is also well-documented prior to his first arrests in 2016. Like Trump he denies visiting the island post arrests or convictions. But Trump has some other questionable behavior around young women, while he owned the Miss USA, Miss Teen USA and Miss Universe pageants, which is also well documented.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/12/donald-trump-miss-usa-dressing-room-2001-rehearsal
Releasing ALL the Epstein flight manifests is a good place to start. Maxwell and Epstein kept a contacts book containing a stack of those manifests. Along with tapes and video files, and even without a cold, hard client list…the shadows and footprints of the guilty in the island sand will start to paint a vivid and lurid picture. Saying there is nothing to see here won’t fly and Trump may find the MAGA troops that he activated angered by this and other conspiracies can also turn their vitriol towards him, as well as not turn out to vote during the 2026 midterms, causing real pain for GOP incumbents and costing Trump the full implementation of his agenda in his second term.
Release the evidence and grand jury files, blur faces on the victims in the videos and redact their last names, unless those victims already made their plight and cases public. Let the chips fall where they may, and I suspect there are some pretty big “chips.”
