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    Epstein estate records release could shine light on sex trafficker’s connections – or show nothing at all

    The release of records from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate to US lawmakers this week, as well as potentially suspicious transaction reports, could offer a roadmap to where the scandal swirling around the late convicted sex trafficker goes next.Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed full transparency around Epstein and his links to a wide circle of powerful, rich and famous associates. But instead, the administration has been accused of foot-dragging and a cover-up, and has faced intense scrutiny over the extent of Trump’s own social contact with Epstein.Due to be handed over this week to the House oversight committee chair are estate records that include Epstein’s 50th “birthday book” compiled with notes from friends – including an entry allegedly signed by Trump that is now the subject of a defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal.They also include Epstein’s last will and testament, agreements he signed with federal prosecutors in Florida in 2008, his contacts from his “black book”, non-disclosure agreements, and financial transactions and holdings. In addition, the committee has asked the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, for relevant suspicious activity reports (SARs) in connection with the investigation and prosecution of Epstein and his one-time girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell on sex-trafficking charges.The committee this week also plans to hold a transcribed interview with Alex Acosta, Trump’s first-term labor secretary who was US attorney for the southern district of Florida when the justice department struck a plea deal with Epstein that victims have repeatedly said allowed him to get away with many crimes.Then there is a stalled campaign by the Kentucky Republican representative Thomas Massie and the California Democrat Ro Khanna to pass legislation to force the government to release all documents relating to the Epstein-Maxwell investigation.The White House has reportedly advised Republicans in Congress that supporting the effort would “be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration”.Adding to pressure on the Trump administration, Epstein survivors said last week they would compile their own client list of alleged abusers if the information was not released. Massie and Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said they would read out the names on the House floor under a protective “speech or debate” clause.But none of the potential avenues for more information on the Epstein-Maxwell sex-trafficking conspiracy may be more fruitful than the financial disclosures, and especially the SARs, if they are made public.But the SARs request is already mired in partisan politics, with Democratic senator Ron Wyden accusing Bessent of withholding key information. In a letter, Wyden listed 58 people or institutions he wanted records on. “Treasury records shine a light on how high-profile individuals paid Epstein staggering sums of money, which was then used to move women around the world or engage in dubious transactions indicative of money laundering,” he said.Banks are required to file SARs with the treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network when they suspect a criminal violation, when specified transaction thresholds are reached, or when they suspect money laundering.According to Patrice Schiano, a former FBI forensic accountant now with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, an SAR itself does not necessarily reveal much – but it can be used by law enforcement to subpoena information, including the originator and beneficiaries of the transaction.“They’re documents that speak for themselves. You might find things you don’t necessarily know you’re looking for. Maybe a source is telling you something but you don’t really know the support behind the SARs, and there are ways with SARs you can begin to figure things out,” Schiano said.In a 2023 lawsuit, the Epstein victims and the US Virgin Islands claimed that JP Morgan notified the government of $1bn in suspicious transactions by Epstein dating back to 2003 – but made the report only after Epstein was arrested in 2019.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLawyers for the bank said it had flagged the treasury department six times, including as early as 2002, about Epstein’s financial activity and that the federal government gave no response and took no action. The bank settled the action for $290m. JP Morgan said that any association with Epstein “was a mistake, and we regret it”.According to Schiano, Epstein’s banking information, if lawmakers can get it, could be “a rich source”.Schiano added: “But you have to have access to SARs, then you have to get a subpoena, and then you have to crunch the data. It’s not easy to do, and it takes a long time, but they could have all the information they need to do a comprehensive investigation.”But will they? A release last week of more than 30,000 pages of Epstein-related documents yielded little new. Wyden noted in his letter that Bessent has twice declined to produce treasury documents to the committee. The senator and his staff viewed some of the SARs last year, but they were not allowed to copy the documents.A treasury department spokesperson called Wyden’s request “political theater”.Representative James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, has also issued deposition subpoenas to several former senior US government officials and figures such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, Merrick Garland, Robert Mueller, William Barr, Jeff Sessions and Alberto Gonzales to testify.Marie Springer, author of The Politics of Ponzi Schemes: History, Theory, and Policy, warned the truth about Epstein may remain a mystery and even the release of estate records may show little.“I’m very suspicious about the whole Epstein case. I don’t think we will ever have full disclosure,” Springer said. “He had a lot of money for someone who didn’t graduate from college. The curiosity is around why and how, and the people alive now aren’t willing to tell the story.” More

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    Ghislaine Maxwell’s grand jury transcripts are likely a dud, but other documents could reveal much

    When Donald Trump’s Department of Justice requested the release of grand jury transcripts in criminal proceedings against sex-traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the move did little to quiet an ever-growing chorus of critics frustrated by the US president’s backtracking over disclosing investigative files.Indeed, the justice department’s filings in this request revealed that only two law enforcement officers testified during grand jury proceedings in New York, undermining notions that unsealing them would reveal numerous truths.Manhattan federal court judge Paul Engelmayer recently rejected the justice department’s unsealing gambit and, in his decision, dealt yet another blow to the suggestion that grand jury documents would foster transparency about Epstein and Maxwell’s crimes and their social links to powerful figures such as Bill Clinton, Donald Trump himself and many others.“Insofar as the motion to unseal implies that the grand jury materials are an untapped mine lode of undisclosed information about Epstein or Maxwell or confederates, they definitively are not that,” Engelmayer said, adding that anyone who expected new information to emerge from the documents “would come away feeling disappointed and misled”.“There is no ‘there’ there,” Engelmayer said in his written decision.In disabusing the possibility of bombshells in Maxwell’s grand jury transcripts, questions once again abound as to whether other investigative documents on Epstein will ever see the light of day – and whether there will be any political consequences for Trump if his justice department does not deliver them to a public increasingly convinced of a cover-up.Neama Rahmani, founder of West Coast Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor, said the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, and the FBI director, Kash Patel, have the legal power to release these other documents – but it might be politics that is keeping them from doing so.“They hold the key,” he said. “With a stroke of their pen, they can release the Epstein files.”Most of the Epstein files are not grand jury transcripts protected by sealing, Rahmani said. “There has to be a treasure trove of information that the Department of Justice has.“Members of the public [and] the media, they can’t compel the DoJ to release the information under a [Freedom of Information Act] request or anything similar, because there’s the law enforcement privilege, the deliberative process privilege,” Rahmani added. “The DoJ doesn’t have to make public its confidential files just because the public wants to, but they can certainly choose to do so.“Trump was inaugurated in January. Bondi has been AG for seven months now. How long does it take to go through these documents?“I think we’re waiting for something that’s never going to come to fruition.”Victims’ advocates have also noted that the Trump administration is capable of releasing these documents so that those whom Epstein and Maxwell preyed on can get justice.“For the last 20 years the victims have always wanted the full disclosure of information regarding Epstein and Maxwell’s sexual-trafficking scheme. They have always wanted all individuals to be held accountable for their part in the sexual exploitation,” said Spencer Kuvin, chief legal officer of Goldlaw, who has represented multiple Epstein victims.“The current administration has the power to release everything by merely signing an executive order. Instead of trying to help victims and expose sexual predators, they are more worried about protecting their friends who socialized with these criminals.”Analysts have voiced differing views on whether there is longterm political liability for Trump if the documents are not released.Susan MacManus, professor emerita of political science at the University of South Florida, said there are several possibilities. Republicans might hope that people grow bored with the issue and start focusing on other subjects.A smaller cohort of ultra-conservative Republicans, however, is dissatisfied that the documents have not been released.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“They’re disappointed in Trump because they think that there’s something hidden there, and they believe in transparency,” MacManus explained. Some Republicans might think that “ultimately, at least some of this stuff will come out”, implicating Democrat and Republican politicians alike.MacManus does not think that this issue will sway an election, however.“I see this as something that goes out of the picture and comes back in and goes out and comes back in,” MacManus said. “But I don’t think it’s enough to move somebody’s vote if they’re a Republican or if they’re a Democrat, they’re going to stick with their party.”Rick Wilson, the Lincoln Project co-founder and former Republican strategist, felt the document issue presented a dramatic problem for Trump.“I just feel like they’re in a really bad rut right now. I don’t think they’ve got an easy way out of this,” Wilson said.Wilson said that recent polling he’s conducted indicates that the controversy is not going away.“Americans, and Republicans in particular, are paying attention to this story because there is a ‘there’ there for them,” he said.Matt Terrill, a Republican strategist and managing partner of public affairs firm Firehouse Strategies, said that at the moment, interest in the issue has died down for the time being. Americans are focused on issues such as the economy, and many are on vacation.When Congress returns, however, Terrill expects the controversy will also return to the forefront, but that doesn’t mean the attention will be entirely on Trump. The House oversight committee subpoenaed Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as several former attorneys general and law enforcement officials, to testify about Epstein.“That could take the spotlight off President Trump,” he said. Even if this diverts attention from the president, Terrill said it would behoove the administration to be more open about whatever is going on.“There are many people in the Maga base who joined the Maga base because they want government transparency and they want accountability. They want justice and, for right or wrong, many people in the Maga base, and even those outside of the Maga base, feel as though they’re not getting that right now with this situation.”“So I do think it’s important, if you’re the administration, the Trump administration, to continue to put out everything you have in terms of this case,” he said. “If you can’t put things out, explain to the American people why you can’t put those things out.” More

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    New York might decriminalize sex work. But will it do so safely and responsibly? | Geoffrey Mak

    New York might decriminalize sex work. But will it do so safely and responsibly?Geoffrey MakIn an odd twist, leftwing groups support a libertarian, free-market approach, while some sex trafficking survivors support a more cautious, regulated approach The New York state legislature is debating between two bills that decriminalize sex work. The bills agree on the need to decriminalize sex workers but offer very different approaches for doing so. The Stop Violence in the Sex Trades Act seeks to fully legalize the sex trade. The Sex Trade Survivors Justice and Equality Act, which is adapted from the Nordic model, would decriminalize sex workers while keeping in place laws penalizing pimps and clients.In an odd twist, the first bill, which takes a libertarian and free-market approach to sex work, is supported by leftwing groups including the Democratic Socialists of America. Sex trafficking survivor groups, political moderates and prosecutors have mostly supported the more cautious, regulated approach. I believe advocates for both bills want the best for sex workers. But the first approach – a blanket decriminalization of sex work, including of pimps and johns – may make sex workers less safe, not more.No one disputes that sex workers face serious and constant risk of violence, and that the status quo is unsustainable and unjust. Since sex work is illegal in all states except Nevada, sex workers – who are at high risk of violence by clients, pimps and the police – generally have no way to organize for better labor protections, or to report violence without risking incrimination. In other countries, decriminalizing sex workers has made them safer. Studies of Sweden and Northern Ireland found that even partial decriminalization reduced street prostitution, lowering client violence.Decriminalization also aims to break the vicious cycle of police violence, incarceration and deportation. “I have so many issues with the vice squad,” New York state senator Jessica Ramos, who co-sponsored the Stop Violence bill for full decriminalization, told me. She accuses the police of either doing too much or too little.When a Queens vice squad raided a Flushing massage parlor in 2017, a worker fell off a second-floor balcony and died. In 2018, police officers across New York, including members of a vice squad in southern Brooklyn, were arrested for providing protection for a sex trafficking ring. The ring operated across boroughs – including in the district Ramos represents, where mostly Latina sex workers, some of them undocumented immigrants, walk the streets.“People who are most often targeted for police harassment or arrests or for violence – due to or related to sex work – are women, poor people, people of color, immigrants and trans people,” Mark Mishler, the legislative director for New York state senator Julia Salazar, who sponsored the Stop Violence bill, told me.There’s some evidence that arrests of sex workers in New York might already be decreasing on their own. The NYPD cites an overall decline in prostitution-related arrests (including of buyers and pimps as well as workers) in recent years. Arrests went from 1,069 in 2019 down to 193 in 2021. In an emailed statement, an NYPD spokesperson told me, “The NYPD’s enforcement priorities shifted in early 2017, and have continued, leading to fewer arrests over recent years of sex workers for prostitution and a greater share of arrests of those who buy sex and promote sex for sale.”Nevertheless, advocacy for full decriminalization has conjoined itself with vast, increasing leftwing support for police abolition. Leftwing and sex workers’ groups have embraced the abortion rights slogan “My body, my choice,” readapting it to sex workers’ freedom to do whatever they choose with their bodies. Under the slogan “Sex work is work,” the DSA considers full decriminalization as “a central fight for the labor movement and for socialist feminism”.Perhaps. But a misguided legislative intervention can hurt more than help. In 2018, for example, Congress passed Fosta/Sesta, a law that banned online sex ads – inadvertently flushing more sex workers out into the streets, where rushed negotiations put them at even greater risk of client-perpetrated violence.The movement for full decriminalization is anti-discrimination, anti-carceral and anti-police. But what do its arguments have to say about the concrete reality of sex trafficking? The Stop Violence bill might be more ideologically photogenic, but its opponents worry that full decriminalization might provide loopholes – or a carte blanche – for sex trafficking, a prospect that supporters of the Stop Violence bill don’t seem to acknowledge.Alexi Meyers, a former prosecutor and a consultant for the partial decriminalization bill, told me that if the Stop Violence bill repeals a statute criminalizing “promoting prostitution” (which refers to pimps) at the felony level, it would take away “the bread and butter of trafficking cases”.In New York, sex trafficking laws look for material force – like drug use, physical violence, kidnapping by withholding someone’s passport, or the destruction of property – as evidence of sex trafficking. But force is often psychological, with consent manufactured.Cristian Eduardo, a Mexican immigrant and sex trafficking survivor, told me that his traffickers often made him believe that he was choosing the life. This was in 2015, when he lived in an apartment in Queens operated by traffickers who gave him food, housing and vital HIV medication – which they convinced him he couldn’t get elsewhere – in exchange for sex with whichever john they assigned him.“The sex buyers are often very violent and abusive,” Eduardo said about his years in trafficking. “I never knew what was going to happen. The only thing I knew was I was going to be used as an empty vessel.”He says that if had been asked in court if he had consented to his treatment, he probably would have said yes, at the time. “I didn’t know it was exploitation, I thought it was my own fault and my own choice,” he said.Meyers, who worked on trafficking cases at the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, added, “We don’t always have victims who are cooperative with prosecutors – whether they are so highly traumatized by what they’ve been through, or whether they are terrified of their trafficker.” For this reason anti-pimping statutes are all the more important; they are a way to get traffickers off the streets without having to prove in court that their victims were definitively coerced.Yet advocates for full decriminalization often seem blithely uninterested in this dilemma. When I asked Mishler, Julia Salazar’s legislative director, about trafficked workers who might be hesitant to testify against their traffickers for fear of violence or homelessness, he said, “That’s not our problem. The law is the law.”I put the same question to Mariah Grant, the research and advocacy director of the Sex Workers Project, which supports full decriminalization. “You aren’t going to arrest your way out of this problem,” she said. “What we need is money that is being wrongfully diverted towards trafficking cases – that, in fact, are not actually trafficking, but people who are adults consenting to work in the sex trades – to be instead moved towards social services.”But this stance – “not actually trafficking” – feels like willed ignorance, ethically lazy or naive in the extreme. Yes, trafficked sex workers need social services, but they also need laws, not ideals, to protect them. You can’t girlboss your way out of trafficking.According to the New York State Interagency Task Force on Human Trafficking, there were about 1,000 confirmed victims of sex trafficking in New York between 2007 and 2019, a number that Meyers told me is probably an undercount of the actual victims. If the Stop Violence bill passed, that number could go up. One 2013 study of 150 countries showed that, on average, countries where prostitution is legal reported larger human trafficking inflows. For instance, sex trafficking in Germany declined gradually through 2001, then – after sex work was decriminalized in 2002 – began to increase again.There are persuasive advantages to full decriminalization. Sex workers would be able to unionize. Third-party workers, like those operating phone lines or client screeners, could work without fear of being prosecuted as pimps, creating a safer workplace. An increased demand of buyers, once decriminalized, would give sex workers more bargaining power. A 2007 study in New Zealand has shown that after full decriminalization, almost 65% of sex workers found it easier to refuse clients, and 57% reported improved police attitudes towards sex workers.But even as “sex work is work,” the sex trade can’t be treated like any other service industry, because most service industries aren’t inextricably entangled with violence and organized crime. Any law decriminalizing sex workers needs to address the sex trade as a whole, and prioritize the needs of the most disadvantaged. It’s possible to reduce violence against sex workers while also protecting those in trafficking; partial decriminalization would accomplish that.“It’s just so sad that people are like, yes, sex work is empowering, sex work is work,” Eduardo said. “And I’m like, You are not fighting for the vulnerable when you’re not fighting for the ones who are in need. You’re fighting to give more power to those who already have it.”
    Geoffrey Mak is a New York-based writer
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