Dershowitz And Ken Starr, Two Epstein Lawyers, Join Trump’s Impeachment Team
“I guess if you can get a great deal for a serial pedophile (allowing him to go free and continue to molest more children) — anything is possible.”
President Trump recruited celebrity lawyers Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr to his impeachment defense team on Saturday, two attorneys who previously worked together to help multi-millionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein win a 13-month plea deal with generous work release privileges despite accusations from at least 40 teenage girls that he operated a massive child sex trafficking network.
Trump’s decision to hire members of Epstein’s former defense team comes days after the U.S. Virgin Islands filed a bombshell lawsuit claiming that the registered sex offender continued to traffick hundreds of girls as recently as 2018, raising questions about the president’s own ties to the serial pedophile as well as the fitness of his new legal appointments.
Both of them knew what Epstein was doing.
— julie k. brown (@jkbjournalist) January 18, 2020
On Wednesday, the U.S. Virgin Islands’ attorney general filed a lawsuit alleging that Epstein continued to sexually traffick hundreds of young women and girls, some as young as 12, to his private Caribbean island as recently as 2018. The lawsuit states that the registered sex offender used a web of shell companies, in addition to a computer database to track his victims’ availability and movements, to execute and conceal his crimes.
According to Miami Herald journalist Julie K. Brown, whose investigative work detailed 2008 Epstein’s plea deal negotiated by Dershowitz, Starr, and former Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta and led to Epstein’s 2019 arrest, Starr and Dershowitz knew their client was continuing his predatory behavior.
“Both of them knew what Epstein was doing,” tweeted Brown on Saturday.
Three Epstein accusers – Sarah Ransome, Maria Farmer and Virginia Giuffre – have brought allegations against Dershowitz in court filings and defamation lawsuits. The lawyer helped negotiate Epstein’s secret plea deal in 2008 without the knowledge of his at least 40 teenaged accusers. The plea deal immunized Epstein’s potential accomplices from prosecution.
Dershowitz, who in late 2018 said he was still advising Epstein, has also sought to block the press from access to criminal proceedings and has repeatedly disparaged his accusers, leading Giuffre to file a defamation lawsuit against him last April.
https://twitter.com/jkbjournalist/status/1218337256483840000?s=20
Dershowitz emphasizes that he is a Democrat who will not vote for Trump and that he is only taking a role in the proceedings to protect the Constitution:
“Abuse of power, even if proved, is not an impeachable offense,” said Dershowitz. “That’s what the framers rejected. They didn’t want to give Congress the authority to remove a president because he abused his power.”
The president also does not hold conventional ties with his new ally Ken Starr. When asked by Matt Lauer, who is also a sexual predator, if Clinton should be impeached, Trump lashed out against Starr:
“I think Ken Starr’s a lunatic,” Trump said. “I really think that Ken Starr is a disaster.”
Trump later said in the same interview: ”I really think that Ken Starr was terrible.”
When he was later asked about Hillary Clinton running for Senate, Trump once again used the opportunity to disparage Starr:
“She’s had a very tough life the last few years,” Trump said. “I mean, what could be tougher than that? I mean, can you imagine those evenings when he’s just being lambasted by this crazy Ken Starr, who is a total wacko? There’s the guy. I mean, he is totally off his rocker.”
Starr later resigned in disgrace from his position as the president of the University of Baylor, the nation’s largest Baptist college, for his failure to respond to sexual assault allegations against the school’s football players.
I guess if you can get a great deal for a serial pedophile (allowing him to go free and continue to molest more children) — anything is possible. #JeffreyEpstein #perversionofjustice https://t.co/Q0W78T6Vrq
— julie k. brown (@jkbjournalist) January 17, 2020
Trump’s appointment of the two controversial celebrity lawyers raises questions about his own record of sexual misconduct and assault, of which at least 22 women have accused him of, and his relationship with their former client Jeffrey Epstein.
In 2002, Trump told New York magazine, “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy … He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers, was a 15-year-old spa assistant at Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago country club in Palm Beach when she was allegedly recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell. Epstein was a regular visitor at Mar-A-Lago in the 1990s until at least the early 2000s. Flight logs show Trump flew on the “Lolita Express,” as did Dershowitz.
Trump hired Alex Acosta, the prosecutor who let Epstein off in 2008 with a 13-month plea deal that gave immunity to all co-conspirators and completely excluded his at least 40 teenage accusers from the process, as his Labor Secretary.
When Ivanka condemned Roy Moore’s Alabama campaign and said “there is a special place in hell for people who prey on children,” Steve Bannon replied: ““What about the allegations about her dad and that 13-year-old?”
One day the myriad ties of Trumpworld with sex trafficking, including of children, will emerge. His OK state 2016 campaign manager and a KY campaign official were convicted of this crime in 2017-2018. https://t.co/1UujbACDFu
— Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat) January 14, 2020
Convicted pedophile and Mueller witness George Nader, who was charged with possession of child pornography this week, also had ties to both the Trump administration and the Clintons.
Historian and New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat mocked Ivanka Trump’s supposed commitment to fighting human trafficking on Tuesday, noting that her father’s administration has slowed federal efforts to combat human trafficking in the U.S. and cut back help for victims, “for reasons you know”:
Right on cue, @IvankaTrump! Always cover up Daddy’s sins. He has *slowed efforts to combat trafficking, for reasons you know. https://t.co/zfYzElcIuq https://t.co/KYl2c2Xpj3
— Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat) January 14, 2020
As Axios reported in September:
“The number of defendants charged with human trafficking by federal attorneys fell to 386 last year, from 553 in 2017, according to the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report.
“So far this year, federal attorneys have prosecuted 39% of the cases referred to them with child sex trafficking as the lead charge, according to data collected by Syracuse University. That’s down from 49% in the last year of the Obama administration.
“Investigations are also down: In 2018, the Justice Department opened just 657 trafficking investigations — down from a spike of 1,800 in FY 2016, per the TIP reports.”
