NEW YORK _ Jeffrey Epstein pleaded not guilty Monday in federal court to sex trafficking charges, part of a swirl of developments in the case of the multimillionaire accused of sexually abusing an array of underage girls at his mansions in New York City and Palm Beach, Fla.
Epstein, 66, was arrested on Saturday as he arrived on a private jet from Paris, one of several places where he maintains residences. After spending the rest of the weekend behind bars _ a far cry from his customary opulence _ he appeared in court Monday wearing a blue jail jumpsuit, hours after the Department of Justice unsealed a two-part indictment that could land him in prison for the rest of his life.
His arrest followed a series of stories in the Miami Herald that detailed how prosecutors in South Florida had engineered a controversial deal to grant him immunity when he faced similar charges a decade earlier. The immunity deal was kept secret from his alleged victims, a violation of the Crime Victims' Rights Act.
At a news conference Monday, Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, declared that Epstein's alleged crimes "shocked the conscience." It is alleged that he employed recruiters to lure girls as young as 14 to his home, ostensibly for the purpose of giving him a massage. The massages would turn into sex acts, for which the young girls were paid as much as $200. They could earn additional money if they were then willing to recruit other girls, from malls and other places where young people congregate.
The arrangement was similar to a pyramid scheme, court records show.
The indictment states that the victims often came from troubled backgrounds, making them susceptible to Epstein's entreaties.
After federal agents arrested Epstein, they proceeded to his sprawling Manhattan townhouse to serve a search warrant, breaking down his door in the process. There, Berman said, they found naked pictures of young girls who appeared to be underage.
Berman said the Justice Department wants Epstein to remain locked up while awaiting trial, in light of his financial resources, multiple private planes and homes around the world. Present at Epstein's bond hearing were two of his alleged victims, facing him for the first time in a decade and adding a dramatic element to an already convulsive day in court. The bond hearing was continued to Thursday.
The Epstein case has gained notoriety in part because of his wide circle of rich and influential friends, including President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton and Great Britain's Prince Andrew.
In 2007, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Alexander Acosta, built a similar case against Epstein, going so far as to produce a 50-plus page indictment.
The indictment was discarded, though, after Acosta _ now Trump's secretary of labor _ secretly met one-on-one with one of Epstein's lawyers, Jay Lefkowitz, in October of that year, at a West Palm Beach Marriott.
The meeting resulted in the execution of a non-prosecution agreement that federally immunized not just Epstein, but several other unnamed individuals who allegedly helped enable his activities.
As part of the deal at that time, Epstein pleaded guilty to minor state prostitution charges involving a 17-year-old girl. He served 13 months in the Palm Beach County jail.
The agreement was sealed so that no one _ not even his victims _ knew anything until nearly a year later. By that time, Epstein had already been released from jail and had returned to his jet-setting life.
The series in the Miami Herald brought new attention to the dormant case by describing the extraordinary behind-the-scenes efforts made by prosecutors and defense attorneys to keep the non-prosecution agreement secret from victims, so they could not object.
Emails published as part of the series show how Epstein's lawyers dictated the terms of the deal, which was not fully consummated until 2008.
The Herald revelations have brought a rising chorus of calls for Acosta to resign or be fired from the president's Cabinet.
Three days before Epstein's arrest, a federal appeals court in New York ordered the unsealing of up to 2,000 pages of documents that are expected to show evidence relating to whether Epstein and his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, were recruiting underage girls and young women as part of an international sex trafficking operation. Maxwell, 57, has never been charged.
As part of its investigation, the Miami Herald was able to identify nearly 80 girls who allegedly were molested by Epstein. Four of the victims, now in their late 20s and early 30s, spoke on video about how they were traumatized first by Epstein, then by his lawyers and private investigators, who delved deeply into their backgrounds and social media accounts, and finally by the prosecutors themselves, who disposed of the case without telling them.
One of the victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, said that she was forced by Epstein and Maxwell to have sex with a number of wealthy and powerful politicians, academics and government leaders, including prominent attorney and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew. Both have denied having sex with Giuffre.
Giuffre has never named any other men, largely because she has been afraid, her lawyers said.
In October 2017, as the #MeToo movement spurred a national conversation about the sexual harassment and abuse of women, the Herald had already begun examining the Epstein case. Earlier that year, following Acosta's nomination as labor secretary, the Herald began to take a closer look at what role he played in Epstein's controversial plea bargain. In the 10 years since Epstein's case was closed by the FBI, about two dozen civil court cases had been filed, often alleging that Epstein's sex crimes with underage victims were far more serious than prosecutors led the public to believe.
The vast trove of litigation included tens of thousands of pages of court pleadings, motions, appeals, depositions, hearing transcripts, judges' decisions, witness and victim statements, as well as emails and letters between federal prosecutors and Epstein's defense lawyers.
Besides sorting through volumes of court documents, the Miami Herald also began the process of trying to locate Epstein's victims _ most of whom were labeled in court documents as Jane Does in order to protect their identities as minors. Many of the women said they had never told anyone of the abuse because they were too ashamed and already felt that the criminal justice system had failed them.
The Herald also obtained 10 years of public records connected to the Epstein criminal cases. These included the Palm Beach State Attorney's Office files, the Palm Beach police files, and records from the Florida Department of Corrections, the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice.
