MIAMI _ Attorneys for accused serial sex predator Jeffrey Epstein have asked a New York judge to free him from jail and allow him to await a child sex trafficking trial from the comfort of the same $77 million Manhattan mansion where he's accused of luring teenage girls into unwanted sex acts.
Epstein, currently holed up in a cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, offered ahead of a Monday bond hearing to waive extradition rights and put up his town home and private jet as collateral. His brother, Mark Epstein, also offered to put up his West Palm Beach home.
Epstein's attorneys say the registered sex offender has kept a "spotless" record since prosecutors in South Florida set aside a 53-page indictment on similar allegations in Palm Beach a decade ago and allowed him to plead guilty to lesser state charges. They said Epstein, 66, would consent to GPS monitoring, ground his jet, "demobilize" all his cars in New York and have trustees live in his home.
But New York prosecutors _ who say they found "an extraordinary volume of photographs of nude and partially nude young women and girls" while executing a search warrant at his Manhattan residence last weekend _ have already argued that he's likely to either flee the country or add to what they say are dozens of victims as young as 14 from New York to Palm Beach.
"Each of these factors _ the seriousness of the allegations, the strength of the evidence, and the possibility of lengthy incarceration _ creates an extraordinary incentive to flee," Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, asserted in a Monday letter. "And ... the defendant has the means and money to do so."
The hearing over whether to release Epstein, 66, will be the first in what should be a lengthy and highly watched trial.
In her year-long investigation of Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, Miami Herald reporter Julie Brown tracked down more than 60 women who said they were victims of abuse and revealed the full story behind the sweetheart deal cut by Epstein's powerhouse legal team.
In the seven months since the Herald published "Perversion of Justice," a federal judge ruled the non-prosecution agreement brokered by then South Florida U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta was illegal, and last week Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges in New York state.
Prosecutors say they have information that Epstein recruited and paid dozens of underage girls from 2002 though 2005 to give him massages in his Manhattan and Palm Beach homes that became sexual assaults. The Miami Herald's investigative series Perversion of Justice details how Epstein allegedly paid girls more if they recruited other girls to come to his homes, creating a sexual pyramid scheme.
But Epstein's attorneys argued in their motion Thursday that Berman was attempting to illegally and unconstitutionally prosecute their client over 14-year-old allegations that have already been resolved in South Florida.
Epstein signed a non-prosecution agreement a dozen years ago with the Southern District of Florida after federal agents identified three dozen girls who were allegedly victimized by Epstein at his mansion in Palm Beach. He was allowed to plead guilty to two lesser prostitution-related charges and serve 13 months in jail, during which his valet picked him up six days a week and drove him to his West Palm Beach office for work release.
"The (non-prosecution agreement) immunized Mr. Epstein from five distinct potential federal charges that may have been committed by Epstein ... from in or around 2001 through in or around 2007," Epstein's attorneys wrote Thursday.
They said language in the agreement _ signed into place under Acosta, President Donald Trump's current labor secretary, when he was U.S. attorney for Southern Florida _ clarifies that the terms of the deal applies "globally" to a year-long federal investigation in South Florida, and therefore prevents federal prosecutors in New York from pursuing the same allegations.
Prosecutors haven't responded in writing to the motion. But Berman, the U.S. attorney presiding over the case in Manhattan, already argued in a letter to the magistrate who oversaw Epstein's arraignment this week that New York case law has already deemed that his office is not bound by the terms of the South Florida agreement.
"It is well settled in the Second Circuit that 'a plea agreement in one U.S. Attorney's office does not, unless otherwise stated bind another,'" Berman wrote Monday, adding that the agreement expressly states that it pertains exclusively to prosecutors in South Florida.
Acosta, who a dozen years ago oversaw the decision to set aside a 53-page indictment and allow Epstein to plead to lesser state charges, said Wednesday in a news conference that Epstein should be prosecuted in any other jurisdiction where he's believed to have committed a crime.
But in their filing Thursday, Epstein's attorneys said Acosta resolved any old sex crime allegations in South Florida when he signed his name to their client's non-prosecution agreement _ which was sealed and kept secret from the girls who said Epstein abused them.
"In essence, the government seeks to remand a self-made New York native and lifelong American resident based on dated allegations for which he was already convicted and punished," they wrote.
