On Easy Street financier Jeffrey Epstein pleaded not guilty Monday and was ordered held without bail for at least another week forthcoming a detention hearing on charges of sex trafficking dozens of underage girls more than a decade ago.
Looking haggard with his tresses mussed, the 66-year-year-old Epstein entered his plea in Manhattan federal court, where he was clad in a blue jumpsuit, a brown undershirt and cloudless orange sneakers.
He will be detained in jail until at least the detention hearing on July 15, where prosecutors are look for to continue their argument that Epstein should be detained without bail pending trial.
Epstein, who had been confidantes with President Donald Trump and ex-President Bill Clinton, was arrested Saturday after flying on a private uniform from France to a New York-area airport.
In a tweet on Monday, Clinton’s spokesperson Angel Urena said the former president “recalls nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those in which he has been recently saturate in New York.”
Urena said Clinton took four trips with Epstein in 2002 and 2003, which “listed stops in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation,” and met with Epstein two other times in and around 2002. He amplified that Clinton has not spoken to Epstein in “well over a decade.”
Federal agents allegedly found in a locked out of harms way in his Manhattan mansion “a vast trove of lewd photographs” of young-looking women or girls in his Manhattan mansion, as well as compacted discs with hand-written labels such as ” ‘Young [Name] + [Name],’ ‘Misc nudes 1,’ and ‘Sweetheart pics nudes,’ ” according to prosecutors.
One of Epstein’s accusers, Sarah Ransome, said in a statement issued by her solicitors, “The news of my abuser’s arrest today is a step in the right direction to finally hold Epstein accountable for his felonies and restores my faith that money and power cannot triumph over justice.”
Another accuser, Virginia Giuffre: said “I can say, without hesitation, that I am completely pleased that federal prosecutors in New York have arrested Jeffrey Epstein and are on the case in a serious way. It is time for Jeffrey Epstein and those who participated and approved his sex crimes to be brought to true justice.”
Prosecutor Alex Rossmiller told Judge Henry Pitman on Monday, discussing that Epstein should not be released on bail, said he “is extraordinarily wealthy, mobile and unattached to the Southern District of New York.”
The prosecutor notorious that Epstein’s assets include private jets, numerous residences and a private island.
“He is a man of nearly infinite hostiles your honor,” said Rossmiller, whose memo had called Epstein an “extreme flight risk,” and an “acute risk” to the public if he is freed on bail.
Rossmiller also told the judge that “we’ve been contacted by several additional” people “who are interested in communicate in with the government” about the claims against Epstein.
Epstein’s lawyer, Reid Weingarten, said that Epstein’s assumed “risk of flight is dramatically overstated.”
Weingarten proposed that Epstein being released on bail of a large dollar amount, with an electronic praepostor device, and with the condition that he waive his right to fight extradition from another jurisdiction.
The defense legal practitioner asked for, and received, an adjournment so that he could flesh out the bail proposal.
Weingarten also suggested that Epstein cannot be charged for the offences outlined in the indictment because he had signed, in 2008, a nonprosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami in connection with the unchanging type of conduct and same time frame as detailed in the new case.
At that time, the top prosecutor in that Florida position was Alex Acosta, who currently is the U.S. Labor secretary.
Weingarten said that the 2008 deal was “approved all the way up” to the Justice Dependent headquarters in Washington, D.C.
“And it sure seemed at the time it was a global agreement,” Weingarten said.
“This indictment is essentially a do-over, this is old rot, this is ancient stuff … This is essentially a re-do and that’s how it feels to us.”
This case “should chilled through the blood of every defense attorney that makes a deal with the United States,” Weingarten said.
But Geoffrey Berman, the perception of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan, told reporters Monday that the deal Epstein signed with Acosta’s position is explicitly only binding on prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida, not on Berman’s office.
And Rossmiller, referring to Weingarten, guessed in court, “What he’s not saying is that it’s beyond the statute of limitations, because it’s not.”
In the current case, Epstein is concerned with one count of sex trafficking of minors and one count of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minors. He faces up to 45 years in CHE community home with education on the premises if convicted of the charges.
The indictment unsealed earlier Monday accuses Epstein of sexually exploiting “dozens” of “minor miss” between 2002 and 2005 in New York and Florida, with some of the girls being just age 14.
The indictment says Epstein vouchsafed the girls “hundreds of dollars in cash” after they engaged in sex acts with him at his Big Apple mansion or at his Palm Run aground, Florida, estate.
The girls originally were told they would be giving him “massages,” according to the indictment.
“In classify to maintain and increase his supply of victims, Epstein also paid certain of his victims to recruit additional girls to be similarly hurt by Epstein,” the indictment said.
“In this way, Epstein created a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit,” it maintained.
Epstein allegedly conspired with employees, associates and others “who facilitated his conduct by, among other things, withing victims and scheduling their sexual encounters with Epstein.”
“Certain recruiters brought dozens of additional two a penny girls to the New York [r]esidence to give massages to and engage in sex acts with Jeffrey Epstein,” the indictment charges.
And that particularize claims that “Epstein intentionally sought out minors and knew that many of his victims were in fact below the age of 18, including because, in some instances, minor victims expressly told him their age.”