ReportWire

Tag: sex-trafficking

  • Sex trafficking sting in San Diego County frees 19 victims, leads to 10 Arrests

    An officer talks with a sex trafficking victim. (File photo courtesy of the FBI)

    An anti-sex trafficking operation carried out by law enforcement agencies in San Diego, Chula Vista and National City earlier this month resulted in 10 arrests and the recovery of 19 alleged trafficking victims, it was announced Tuesday.

    Operation Home for the Holidays was conducted over a three-day period and involved undercover officers posing as sex buyers in order to encounter potential traffickers and trafficking victims.

    Those arrested during the operation include four men charged with pimping, pandering and violating a protective order, who face anywhere between six and 20 years in prison if convicted, according to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office. Six others were issued misdemeanor citations for allegedly attempting to purchase sex.

    The 19 recovered individuals were offered support services, which the DA’s Office said will “help them escape and heal from exploitation and human trafficking.”

    Operation Home for the Holidays is an annual initiative conducted by the multi-agency San Diego Human Trafficking Task Force, which includes local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.

    California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said in a statement that the operation “is a key part of our efforts to keep our communities safe for the holidays and all year round.”

    Similar operations are conducted throughout the year in San Diego County, including an annual operation held during Comic-Con weekend that resulted in 13 arrests and 10 victims recovered this year, and an operation conducted last month in National City and southern San Diego that led to the rescues of two minors.

    “The ugly truth is that sex trafficking remains a lucrative criminal industry fueled by demand that generating over $810 million a year in San Diego County,” District Atty Summer Stephan said.

    “I’m proud of our work with the San Diego Regional Human Trafficking Task Force, my office’s Sex Crimes and Human Trafficking Division and all our partners that work around the clock to recover victims as young as 12,” she said.

    “Together they hold human traffickers and criminal buyers accountable for their crimes. The ongoing efforts of the task force demonstrate that law enforcement will not tolerate this modern-day slavery of vulnerable victims who are bought and sold like a slice of pizza.”

    Officials asked that anyone who is or knows someone being coerced or forced to engage in sexual activity or labor call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 to access help.


    Source link

  • FBI Addresses Epstein Letter Claiming Trump Likes Young Girls Hours After It Goes Viral – How People Are Reacting To Their Response! – Perez Hilton

    The Department of Justice is speaking out about that alarming letter about Donald Trump…

    As we previously reported, the DOJ released thousands more documents from the Jeffrey Epstein files on Tuesday morning — including ones that mention Trump. We reported how an email in the files alleges Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet multiple times — including four times with Epstein’s partner and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. But one of the other most troubling documents to drop? It’s a letter the convicted sex offender allegedly sent to Larry Nassar, the former US gymnastics team doctor convicted of sexually assaulting young gymnasts, while they were both in federal prison in August 2019, which features a disturbing line about the president. The message said:

    “As you will know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home. Good luck! We shared one thing … our love & caring for young ladies and the hope they reach their full potential. Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch’, whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair. Yours, J. Epstein.”

    Related: Nicki Minaj Goes Full MAGA! She Praises Trump, Reaffirms Anti-Trans Views, & More!

    “Our president” was Donald Trump at the time. Take a look at it (below):

    (c) Department of Justice

    The letter was postmarked on August 13, 2019, just three days after Epstein died by suicide. According to the file, the feds obtained the note when it came back to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York since Nassar was moved from Tucson, Arizona, to a Florida prison. An FBI agent reportedly requested that a laboratory perform a handwriting analysis to prove Epstein wrote the letter, but the results are unknown.

    The letter has since gone viral online, with people calling out the alleged comment about Trump. In fact, the new round of files, including the letter, led to an Epstein survivor and now former Trump supporter to call for his impeachment. Hours after the new batch of documents dropped on Tuesday, the Department of Justice announced on X (Twitter) that they are “currently looking into the validity of this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar and we will follow up as soon as possible.” However, they made a point to note three things right off the bat:

    “- The postmark on the envelope is Virginia, not New York, where Jeffrey Epstein was jailed at the time.

    -The return address listed the wrong jail where Epstein was held and did not include his inmate number, which is required for outgoing mail.

    -The envelope was processed three days AFTER Epstein’s death.”

    Well, nearly two hours later, the DOJ is already coming forward with the supposed answers as to whether the letter is legit or not. The verdict? The department claimed on X (Twitter) that the letter is “FAKE.” Yes, in all caps. The tweet said:

    “The FBI has confirmed this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is FAKE. The fake letter was received by the jail, and flagged for the FBI at the time.”

    According to the DOJ, the FBI came to that conclusion for three reasons:

    “-The writing does not appear to match Jeffrey Epstein’s.

    -The letter was postmarked three days after Epstein’s death out of Northern Virginia, when he was jailed in New York.

    -The return address did not list the jail where Epstein was held and did not include his inmate number, which is required for outgoing mail.”

    Hmm. The DOJ concluded the post, saying:

    “This fake letter serves as a reminder that just because a document is released by the Department of Justice does not make the allegations or claims within the document factual. Nevertheless, the DOJ will continue to release all material required by law.”

    They determined all that in… only two hours? Really? People, as you can imagine, are not buying a single word the DOJ says following the extremely short investigation. Many even have a lot of questions — including if the letter was fake, why was it included in the files in the first place, why are the results of the handwriting analysis not in the files, and more.

    And let’s not forget, the Associated Press reported about the Epstein letter to Nassar back in 2023. The publication obtained over 4,000 pages of documents related to Epstein’s death from the federal Bureau of Prisons under the Freedom of Information Act at the time, including his attempt to connect with Nassar by mail. The actual details of the letter were unknown back then, though. Regardless, why didn’t the DOJ say something if it’s fake? We also need to point out that the department has only called out supposed “untrue and sensationalist claims” against Trump — and no one else mentioned in the files, which is eyebrow-raising in itself. Not to mention, a photo of him reportedly disappeared from the files. So, all that has people skeptical about what the DOJ claims. See some of the reactions (below):

    “The hand writing assessment was done when? Release the results from the investigation.”

    “This information seems incredibly important. Was it included in the release of that letter? If not, why not?”

    “You completed your investigation in 2 hours?”

    “Then who wrote the letter? Who sent it? Too many unknowns if it’s fake.”

    “Y’all are the same people who released it so are you that incompetent you didn’t check to make sure something that damn scathing involving Trump was real or not before you released it?  More likely one of you f**ked up and it released it with the rest.”

    “If it wasn’t authentic, why was it released as part of the files in the first place?”

    “Ok so where is the FBI document from 2019 (when it was discovered) concluding that it was fake? You put out a tweet and expect us to believe it???”

    “What steps did you take to confirm this? Seems to me you are just regurgitating your statement from earlier. Was there an official analysis done on this originally that you were able to reference so quickly? Seems odd. Not much time has elapsed since you announced you were looking into it?”

    “That’s it? Those are your only reasons? The handwriting is the only valid point. Where’s the report on this? Where and when was the analysis done?”

    “The @FBI requested handwriting analyis on the Epstein-Nassar letter in 2020, according to last night’s file dump (below). Question: Where are the results? Follow up: Did the DOJ examine those results today, 16 hours after the letter’s release, or was a new analysis conducted?”

    It’s clear a lot of people feel like this admin’s response to literally any claim of wrongdoing is to just throw the word “fake” on it and call it a day. But what are YOUR thoughts on the DOJ’s response, Perezcious readers? Are you just as skeptical? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments.

    [Image via MEGA/WENN, New York Sex Offender Registry]

    Perez Hilton

    Source link

  • DOJ Claims Epstein Files Letter From Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar Is Fake

    No prior connection between Jeffrey Epstein and Nassar was publicly known. The note makes a reference to “our president”—at that point, Donald Trump, in his first term—and a seeming predilection for “young, nubile girls.” Epstein’s opening greeting also may refer to an intention to end his own life.

    The additional files related to Jeffery Epstein released by the Justice Department on Tuesday, December 23 include a note addressed to “L.N.” signed by “J. Epstein.”

    “Dear L.N.,” the letter reads, “As you know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home. Good luck! We shared one thing … our love and caring for young ladies and the hope they’d reach their full potential. Our President also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by, he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair.”

    Kase Wickman

    Source link

  • Colorado man gets 84 years in prison for child sex exploitation, trafficking

    A Colorado man who pretended to be a teenager online will spend more than eight decades in federal prison for sexually exploiting children on the internet, federal officials said.

    Austin Ryan Lauless coerced, exploited and threatened at least 84 children on social media into producing thousands of sexually explicit images and videos between 2019 and 2023, according to a news release from the Indiana U.S. Attorney’s Office.

    The victims include children between the ages of 13 and 17 from nearly every state and at least five other countries, federal officials said in the release. Investigators believe there may still be more undiscovered victims.

    Lauless pleaded guilty in September to 13 counts of sexual exploitation of a child, five counts of sex trafficking of a minor, two counts of advertising child sexual abuse material and possession of child sexual abuse material, court records show.

    He was sentenced Wednesday to 84 years in federal prison, which will be followed by a lifetime of supervised release, according to court records.

    Lauless posed as “Cason Fredrickson” and “APOPHIS” on the internet, pretending to be a teenager from New York and other cities, federal officials said. He used photos from public Instagram pages to conceal his real identity: a man in his late 20s who lived in hotels and motels across Colorado and Texas.

    The man misrepresented his age, identity, background and likeness to groom minors and create a false sense of safety, federal prosecutors said. He also used voice modulators and third-party image and video apps to edit content and keep up his disguise.

    “He feigned romantic interest in victims, told them they were attractive and pretended to be in online relationships,” the news release stated. “He purchased items for many victims through Amazon — including fishnet stockings, sexual devices and customized t-shirts — which he instructed them to wear while producing sexually explicit material.”

    Lauless threatened to publicly release the images and videos if his victims failed to comply with his demands or if they tried to tell their parents or law enforcement, federal prosecutors said.

    He sold child sex abuse material at least 141 times and admitted to federal investigators that his collection included thousands of photos and videos, including videos of sadomasochistic abuse and bestiality.

    Source link

  • Epstein survivor Sharlene Rochard calls Justice Department’s partial files release “not sufficient”

    The Justice Department released a new batch of files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Friday. Epstein survivor Sharlene Rochard joins with her reaction. Then, Spencer Kuvin, an attorney who represents some Epstein survivors, provides further analysis.

    Source link

  • DOJ released some of the Epstein Files. Here’s what we know.

    Undated photograph of Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and model Ingrid Seynhaeve from the Epstein estate’s document production to the House Oversight Committee.

    Undated photograph of Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and model Ingrid Seynhaeve from the Epstein estate’s document production to the House Oversight Committee.

    House Oversight Committee Democrats

    After nearly two decades, the Justice Department on Friday finally released a small a portion of its voluminous criminal case files on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

    The documents, which were heavily redacted, spanned four presidential administrations, starting with George W. Bush, who was in office when the first underage girl, 14, reported to the Palm Beach Police Department that she was molested by Epstein in his Palm Beach mansion in 2005. By 2025, the government estimated that Epstein had sexually assaulted or abused more than 1000 victims.

    The DOJ was forced to unseal the documents under the newly passed Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required they publish the material by Friday. A little more than 4,000 documents, many of them photographs, were released on the DOJ website by Friday evening, among them entire 100-page reports completely redacted with no explanation. In some cases, the faces of what appear to be older men were also blacked out.

    Later Friday, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote a letter to members of Congress, obtained by the Miami Herald, telling them that files were under additional review, which he expected to be completed in the next two weeks. In the 6-page letter, he said that in addition to victims’ names being protected, he claimed other redactions were being made under “various privileges” such as “attorney-client privilege” and “work-product privilege.”

    As part of the law, the attorney general has to provide all reasons for each of the redactions within 15 days of the release. The law explicitly prohibits redactions for reasons of “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.”

    Lawmakers said the roll-out fell far short of following the law.

    Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, a co-sponsor of the Epstein files legislation said the release “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law,” on social media Friday, and that a future DOJ could prosecute the Attorney General. His co-sponsor on the bill, California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, called it “an incomplete release with too many redactions,” in a video statement.

    The photographs included images of famous people, Epstein’s mansions, sexual material such as sex toys, and hundreds of photos of naked or nearly naked young women — some clearly young girls — in sexual poses. At least one showed a small girl with her hair tied back, her face shadowed, laying in bed, nude. There were also paintings and photographs of naked young men and women.

    Also filling space were hundreds of mundane photos of interior spaces of Epstein’s residences – his laundry room, closed closet doors, piles of electrical wiring, ductwork, furniture, appliances, even his mops and brooms.

    Victims were disappointed.

    “For survivors, this deadline is not symbolic; it’s a test of whether transparency will finally outweigh the protection of powerful interests,” said survivor Liz Stein. “This staggered release falls far short of the transparency that was intended with the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.”

    There were few documents, other than reports that had long been in the public record, such as flight logs, police reports and pages from the DOJ’s investigation into the case previously revealed in the 2021 trial of Epstein’s accomplice and ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.

    Among the files was also a 1996 complaint filed with the FBI – in which someone said that Epstein was selling photos of her sisters, ages 12 and 16, and threatened to burn down her house.

    The new material included several photographs of former President Bill Clinton: in a pool with a woman whose face is blacked out, with Michael Jackson, and posing with Epstein. A framed photo shows Epstein and a woman holding a check, the signature line reading “DJTrump.” In another photo, former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is laying across the laps of a group of girls, with Maxwell behind him.

    An undated photo released by the Department of Justice as part of the Epstein files shows former President Bill Clinton in a pool with a figure whose face has been blacked out.
    An undated photo released by the Department of Justice as part of the Epstein files shows former President Bill Clinton in a pool with a figure whose face has been blacked out. Department of Justice

    The law that required the files to be made public was authored by a bipartisan group of lawmakers and signed by President Donald Trump on Nov. 19. The president has criticized the intense focus on the documents, calling the files a “hoax” amid scrutiny into his friendship with Epstein.

    Early Friday, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News that he expected several hundred thousand files would be released first, then “several hundred thousand more” in following weeks.

    Later, on X, Blanche added that additional material would be released, “as our review continues, consistent with the law and with protections for victims.”

    Top Democrats threatened legal action if DOJ failed to comply with the law.

    In a joint statement, House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) wrote that Donald Trump and the Justice Department are “now violating federal law as they continue covering up the facts and the evidence about Jeffrey Epstein’s decades-long, billion-dollar, international sex trafficking ring.”

    “We are now examining all legal options in the face of this violation of federal law,” Garcia and Raskin wrote.

    The act does not specify any penalties for violations of the law.

    Unsealing the Epstein Files capped years of intense political debate in Washington which began in 2018, when the Miami Herald published an investigation into the case that raised questions about whether the deal prosecutors gave Epstein was legal.

    Seven months later, Epstein was arrested by prosecutors in New York. He died a month later in federal prison. His death was ruled a suicide by hanging.

    In the wake of the scandal, the U.S. Attorney in Miami who signed off on the deal, Alex Acosta, resigned as labor secretary under President Donald Trump.

    The DOJ opened a probe into the deal in 2019, concluding that while Acosta had executed “poor judgment” neither he nor any of the prosecutors committed professional misconduct. A federal judge, however, ruled that the deal Epstein was given violated the federal Victims’ Rights Act.

    The case continued to attract more scrutiny in 2021 as the DOJ successfully prosecuted Epstein’s accomplice Maxwell. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

    Then, as Trump campaigned to return to the White House in 2024 he and his supporters made the case part of the campaign. Trump indicated he would release at least some of the case files, and his new attorney general, Pam Bondi, promised full transparency.

    But Bondi failed to fulfill that promise, causing a public outcry that only grew after she and FBI Director Kash Patel reversed course in July in a memo and closed the case, noting that there was no “credible” evidence that Epstein had blackmailed prominent individuals, or evidence to investigate anyone, other than Epstein, for committed crimes.

    Trump confidant Elon Musk then abruptly announced on his social media platform X that the reason the files weren’t being unsealed was because Trump’s name was in them. Trump tried to distance himself from Epstein, denying he had much of a connection to the sex trafficker, other than in passing at parties and events.

    A photo of Jeffrey Epstein released by the Department of Justice on Dec. 19, 2025.
    A photo of Jeffrey Epstein released by the Department of Justice on Dec. 19, 2025. Department of Justice

    Those statements seemed to fall flat after the House Oversight Committee earlier this year opened an investigation and began requesting files from the late financier’s estate. Among the files was a “Birthday Book,” that contained an intimately worded drawing and poem, purportedly written and signed by Trump in 2003. Trump has denied the drawing – and the signature – were his.

    “Our government conspired with him and, in doing so, failed to protect hundreds of girls who would never have been harmed had our government simply done its job,” a group of over 20 survivors wrote in a November letter to Congressional representatives.

    Miami Herald reporters Shirsho Dasgupta, Ana Claudia Chacin, Linda Robertson and Churchill Ndonwie contributed to this report.

    This story was originally published December 19, 2025 at 3:29 PM.

    Julie K. Brown

    Miami Herald

    Julie K. Brown is a member of the Miami Herald’s Investigative Team. Her 2017 probe into Palm Beach sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein won multiple journalism awards, including a George Polk Award. She was also a member of the Herald’s 2022 Pulitzer-Prize-winning team recognized for its coverage of the Surfside condo collapse.
    Support my work with a digital subscription


    Profile Image of Claire Healy

    Claire Healy

    Miami Herald

    Claire Healy is an Esserman Investigative Fellow at The Miami Herald. Prior to her current role, she wrote for The Washington Post, where she was a 2024 Pulitzer Finalist for “Searching for Maura.”

    Julie K. Brown,Claire Healy,Claire Heddles

    Source link

  • National City said a surveillance tower was stopping prostitution — but now it’s broken with no fix in sight

    Trucks and motels line Roosevelt Avenue in National City. Image from Google Earth

    When a hit and run driver hit the National City Police Department’s mobile SkyWatch tower in mid-October, it did more than take the two-story tower out of service. 

    It created an opening for pimps and prostitutes to retake the streets over which the tower once stood. 

    During one afternoon earlier this week, multiple women in revealing, skimpy outfits and high heels moved around the area in a stretch so notorious for its history as a go-to place to buy sex on the street that city officials installed a mobile police surveillance tower in 2021, which they purchased for $220,000 through a FEMA grant. 

    The women paced up and down Roosevelt between 4th and 5th Streets, a stretch scattered with motels. One set up camp in the middle of 5th Street.  Others waved and smiled at passing motorists. Yet another woman stood next to a car, leaning through the window talking to a male driver. 

    It was a clear scene of an open sex trade at 3:45 in the afternoon. 

    The SkyWatch tower, which Mayor Ron Morrison earlier that day credited for combatting the problem and turning a high-profile trafficking arrest into an exception rather than the rule, was nowhere in sight.

    But it has been out of commission since mid-October due to the hit-and-run accident.

    The city tried repairing it, but has been unable to because it is a “unique piece of equipment,” said National City Police Department Sergeant Paul Hernandez. He said they’re currently looking for a solution to put the tower back in service.

    When in action, it “is a rugged, highly reinforced mobile surveillance platform,” according to the manufacturer’s website. It says the tower is” rapidly deployable” and “provides a strategic perspective and deterrent.” 

    “The damage was noticed on 10-13-25. It was taken out of service shortly after. Unfortunately, I do not have the exact date it was removed from the area,” Hernandez said.

    Morrison said prostitution fell “like a rock off a cliff”after the city installed the tower.

    He has not responded to follow up questions on how the city is combatting the problem now that the tower is out of commission.  

    National City Police Chief Alejandro Hernandez also did not respond to questions on whether the department has implemented any other actions in the Roosevelt area to deter prostitution in the weeks since the tower was removed.


    Source link

  • Sex trafficking arrest spotlights ‘pimp circuit’ connecting L.A., National City and Las Vegas

    Trucks and motels line Roosevelt Avenue in National City. (File image courtesy of Google Earth)

    A Las Vegas man, Vincent Bailey, has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for sex trafficking a 16-year-old, including for a time on a notorious National City strip that has been a magnet for prostitution for years, but which local law enforcement has failed to shut down. 

    Bailey’s sentencing followed a guilty plea to one count of sex trafficking. The 25-year-old was sentenced in late June, but the U.S. Attorney’s San Diego office didn’t release details of the case until Monday because of the government shutdown.

    Bailey’s criminal activity in this case spanned less than a month in the summer of 2024, but prosecutors allege in a court filing that Bailey made enough in that time to buy a silver Tesla Model 3.

    Bailey connected with the girl, identified only as ‘J F’ in the court filing, on Instagram and eventually drove her around Las Vegas pointing out prostitutes and asking if she would like to make money selling herself for him.

    She declined, but spent the night with him, according to Bailey’s plea deal. The next day he took her to Los Angeles to pimp her out; he later took her to the South Bay.

    In National City, J F called her mother for help. She had no money, a common strategy by pimps to maintain control over their prostitutes. The teen’s mother paid for a rideshare to a cafe, where she called National City police and asked them to meet her. When Bailey learned of this, according to court documents, he threatened to “smack the ‘F’ out of” her if he had to come get her.  

    She ignored his threat and returned to Las Vegas with a relative. But the San Diego Human Trafficking Task Force by then had begun to investigate her case.

    Ten days later, J F’s mother again reported her missing. Prosecutors traced online sex advertisements in Las Vegas at that time to Bailey, because he used the same language as in previous ads in Los Angeles and San Diego.  

    A freeway onramp with trees and greenery on the right and a series of motel signs can be seen on the street directly right of the lanes. In some circles this is known as part of the "pimp circuit" that connects Las Vegas and Southern California.
    Interstate 5 connects National City to the so-called “pimp circuit.” A number of low-budget motels along Roosevelt Avenue east of I-5 offer easy access to the freeway. (Photo courtesy of Google Street View)

    Finally, law enforcement arrested Bailey on Oct. 1, 2024 following a routine traffic stop by the California Highway Patrol. Investigators discovered the girl had been branded with a tattoo under her left eye, matching a tattoo Bailey had.

    In National City, Bailey relied on a motel on the same stretch of Roosevelt Avenue described in a 2021 Times of San Diego story on extensive sex trafficking in the area.

    The plea deal describes Bailey arriving in National City around 1 a.m., checking into a motel, and providing the teen a fake ID. He then told her to  “go out on the ‘blade’ on Roosevelt Avenue for several hours.” “Blade” is how pimps refer to an area with a booming sex trade.

    The earlier story described how this same area, Roosevelt along Interstate 5, was a magnet for sex trafficking, with several motels in the immediate area. National City Police Chief Jose Tellez, told Times of San Diego then that the street was a long-running problem the department had wrestled with for years. 

    “The area is frequented by pimps and traffickers” who have easy on-and-off access to the interstate, Tellez said. Former Mayor Alejandra Sotelo-Solis said at the time her office was “making efforts to improve” the situation, including more and brighter street lighting and removing foliage along the street that provided cover for sex acts.

    After Bailey’s sentencing, Mayor Ron Morrison said he believes his office and the police department have made things tougher for the sex trade. The problem, he said, has “fallen off, like a rock going over a cliff” and is  “nowhere what it was.”

    In addition, there is now  a police tower in the area to observe behavior on the street.

    “The truth is we can’t get all of them,” Morrison said, but he argued targeted efforts like “driving off the johns” are a strong deterrent in reducing the activity.

    National City’s police department did not respond to a request for comment.

    Before Bailey set up shop in National City, he had the young woman working what’s considered the “blade” in Los Angeles, a two-mile section of Figueroa Street in South Central LA.

    The U.S. Attorney’s filing described ‘J F’ being sold in Los Angeles in two ways — “working street-based sex acts and through commercial sex advertisements” placed by Bailey. She told investigators she had “five commercial sex acts per day” and all of her earnings went to the defendant. 

    Stephany Powell — the executive director of a victim-serving nonprofit called Journey Out, and a former LAPD sergeant in charge of the city’s vice unit — said her LA cases regularly included victims from Bakersfield, Fresno, Las Vegas and San Diego.

    Powell said a pimp like Bailey might leave Figueroa even when it’s still profitable if there is too much police activity.

    “They’ll say ‘that the area’s hot,’ meaning that law enforcement’s paying a lot of attention to it,” she said. “So they’ll just move to another area until that gets hot, and they’ll move to another.”

    The one thing the cities on the pimp circuit have in common, she said, “is the ability to make money there.”


    Source link

  • Trump admin responds after ICE employee arrested in sex trafficking sting

    The Trump administration on Wednesday responded to the arrest of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employee caught in a sex trafficking sting, emphasizing that the worker was hired in 2022 under former President Joe Biden.

    An ICE spokesperson said the employee, Alexander Back, was immediately placed on administrative leave and was never a law enforcement officer, adding that the agency is cooperating with local authorities and conducting its own internal investigation.

    An ICE spokesperson told Newsweek via email, “Alexander Back was hired under the Biden administration in 2022 and worked as an I-9 auditor. Back was not and has never been a law enforcement officer. Following his arrest, ICE immediately placed Alexander Back on administrative leave. ICE is working with local authorities as well as conducting its own investigation via the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility.”

    Back, 41, was among 16 men arrested in a Minnesota trafficking investigation that targeted individuals seemingly attempting to solicit a minor for sex, police said.

    Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges said at a news conference on Tuesday that the three-day “Operation Creep” began on November 5 and focused on identifying people seeking to purchase sex from a 17-year-old girl.

    “When he was arrested, he said, ‘I’m ICE, boys,’” Hodges said. “Well, unfortunately for him, we locked him up.”

    This is a breaking news story. Updates to follow. 

    Source link

  • At Trump’s urging, Bondi says US will investigate Epstein’s ties to Clinton and other political foes

    Acceding to President Donald Trump’s demands, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday that she has ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Trump political foes, including former President Bill Clinton.Bondi posted on X that she was assigning Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to lead the probe, capping an eventful week in which congressional Republicans released nearly 23,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate and House Democrats seized on emails mentioning Trump.Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years, didn’t explain what supposed crimes he wanted the Justice Department to investigate. None of the men he mentioned in a social media post demanding the probe has been accused of sexual misconduct by any of Epstein’s victims.Hours before Bondi’s announcement, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would ask her, the Justice Department, and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Clinton and others, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.Trump, calling the matter “the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans,” said the investigation should also include financial giant JPMorgan Chase, which provided banking services to Epstein, and “many other people and institutions.”“This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” the Republican president wrote, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Russian interference in Trump’s 2016 election victory over Bill Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.Asked later Friday whether he should be ordering up such investigations, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One: “I’m the chief law enforcement officer of the country. I’m allowed to do it.”In a July memo regarding the Epstein investigation, the FBI said, “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”The president’s demand for an investigation — and Bondi’s quick acquiescence — is the latest example of the erosion of the Justice Department’s traditional independence from the White House since Trump took office.It is also an extraordinary attempt at deflection. For decades, Trump himself has been scrutinized for his closeness to Epstein — though like the people he now wants investigated, he has not been accused of sexual misconduct by Epstein’s victims.None of Trump’s proposed targets were accused of sex crimesA JPMorgan Chase spokesperson, Patricia Wexler, said the company regretted associating with Epstein “but did not help him commit his heinous acts.”“The government had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks,” she said. The company agreed previously to pay millions of dollars to Epstein’s victims, who had sued arguing that the bank ignored red flags about criminal activity.Clinton has acknowledged traveling on Epstein’s private jet but has said through a spokesperson that he had no knowledge of the late financier’s crimes. He also has never been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s known victims.Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Angel Ureña posted on X Friday: “These emails prove Bill Clinton did nothing and knew nothing. The rest is noise meant to distract from election losses, backfiring shutdowns, and who knows what else.”Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl, but was spared a long jail term when the U.S. attorney in Florida agreed not to prosecute him over allegations that he had paid many other children for sexual acts. After serving about a year in jail and a work release program, Epstein resumed his business and social life until federal prosecutors in New York revived the case in 2019. Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Summers and Hoffman had nothing to do with either case, but both were friendly with Epstein and exchanged emails with him. Those messages were among the documents released this week, along with other correspondence Epstein had with friends and business associates in the years before his death.Nothing in the messages suggested any wrongdoing on the men’s part, other than associating with someone who had been accused of sex crimes against children.Summers, who served in Clinton’s cabinet and is a former Harvard University president, previously said in a statement that he has “great regrets in my life” and that “my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”On social media Friday night, Hoffman called for Trump to release all the Epstein files, saying they will show that “the calls for baseless investigations of me are nothing more than political persecution and slander.” He added, “I was never a client of Epstein’s and never had any engagement with him other than fundraising for MIT.” Hoffman bankrolled writer E. Jean Carroll’s sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against Trump.After Epstein’s sex trafficking arrest in 2019, Hoffman said he’d only had a few interactions with Epstein, all related to his fundraising for MIT’s Media Lab. He nevertheless apologized, saying that “by agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice.”Bondi, in her post, praised Clayton as “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country” and said the Justice Department “will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”Trump called Clayton “a great man, a great attorney,” though he said Bondi chose him for the job.Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term, took over in April as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York — the same office that indicted Epstein and won a sex trafficking conviction against Epstein’s longtime confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell, in 2021.Trump changes course on Epstein filesTrump suggested while campaigning last year that he’d seek to open up the government’s case files on Epstein, but changed course in recent months, blaming Democrats and painting the matter as a “hoax” amid questions about what knowledge he may have had about Epstein’s yearslong exploitation of underage girls.On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three Epstein email exchanges that referenced Trump, including one from 2019 in which Epstein said the president “knew about the girls” and asked Maxwell to stop.White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt accused Democrats of having “selectively leaked emails” to smear Trump.Soon after, Republicans on the committee disclosed a far bigger trove of Epstein’s email correspondence, including messages he sent to longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon and to Britain’s former Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Andrew settled a lawsuit out of court with one of Epstein’s victims, who said she had been paid to have sex with the prince.The House is speeding toward a vote next week to force the Justice Department to release all files and communications related to Epstein.“I don’t care about it, release or not,” Trump said Friday. “If you’re going to do it, then you have to go into Epstein’s friends,” he added, naming Clinton and Hoffman.Still, he said: “This is a Democrat hoax. And a couple, a few Republicans have gone along with it because they’re weak and ineffective.”__Bedayn reported from Denver. Associated Press writer Chris Megerian aboard Air Force One contributed to this report.

    NEW YORK —

    Acceding to President Donald Trump’s demands, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday that she has ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Trump political foes, including former President Bill Clinton.

    Bondi posted on X that she was assigning Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to lead the probe, capping an eventful week in which congressional Republicans released nearly 23,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate and House Democrats seized on emails mentioning Trump.

    Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years, didn’t explain what supposed crimes he wanted the Justice Department to investigate. None of the men he mentioned in a social media post demanding the probe has been accused of sexual misconduct by any of Epstein’s victims.

    Hours before Bondi’s announcement, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would ask her, the Justice Department, and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Clinton and others, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.

    Trump, calling the matter “the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans,” said the investigation should also include financial giant JPMorgan Chase, which provided banking services to Epstein, and “many other people and institutions.”

    “This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” the Republican president wrote, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Russian interference in Trump’s 2016 election victory over Bill Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

    Asked later Friday whether he should be ordering up such investigations, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One: “I’m the chief law enforcement officer of the country. I’m allowed to do it.”

    In a July memo regarding the Epstein investigation, the FBI said, “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

    The president’s demand for an investigation — and Bondi’s quick acquiescence — is the latest example of the erosion of the Justice Department’s traditional independence from the White House since Trump took office.

    It is also an extraordinary attempt at deflection. For decades, Trump himself has been scrutinized for his closeness to Epstein — though like the people he now wants investigated, he has not been accused of sexual misconduct by Epstein’s victims.

    None of Trump’s proposed targets were accused of sex crimes

    A JPMorgan Chase spokesperson, Patricia Wexler, said the company regretted associating with Epstein “but did not help him commit his heinous acts.”

    “The government had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks,” she said. The company agreed previously to pay millions of dollars to Epstein’s victims, who had sued arguing that the bank ignored red flags about criminal activity.

    Clinton has acknowledged traveling on Epstein’s private jet but has said through a spokesperson that he had no knowledge of the late financier’s crimes. He also has never been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s known victims.

    Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Angel Ureña posted on X Friday: “These emails prove Bill Clinton did nothing and knew nothing. The rest is noise meant to distract from election losses, backfiring shutdowns, and who knows what else.”

    Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl, but was spared a long jail term when the U.S. attorney in Florida agreed not to prosecute him over allegations that he had paid many other children for sexual acts. After serving about a year in jail and a work release program, Epstein resumed his business and social life until federal prosecutors in New York revived the case in 2019. Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

    Summers and Hoffman had nothing to do with either case, but both were friendly with Epstein and exchanged emails with him. Those messages were among the documents released this week, along with other correspondence Epstein had with friends and business associates in the years before his death.

    Nothing in the messages suggested any wrongdoing on the men’s part, other than associating with someone who had been accused of sex crimes against children.

    Summers, who served in Clinton’s cabinet and is a former Harvard University president, previously said in a statement that he has “great regrets in my life” and that “my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”

    On social media Friday night, Hoffman called for Trump to release all the Epstein files, saying they will show that “the calls for baseless investigations of me are nothing more than political persecution and slander.” He added, “I was never a client of Epstein’s and never had any engagement with him other than fundraising for MIT.” Hoffman bankrolled writer E. Jean Carroll’s sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against Trump.

    After Epstein’s sex trafficking arrest in 2019, Hoffman said he’d only had a few interactions with Epstein, all related to his fundraising for MIT’s Media Lab. He nevertheless apologized, saying that “by agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice.”

    Bondi, in her post, praised Clayton as “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country” and said the Justice Department “will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”

    Trump called Clayton “a great man, a great attorney,” though he said Bondi chose him for the job.

    Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term, took over in April as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York — the same office that indicted Epstein and won a sex trafficking conviction against Epstein’s longtime confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell, in 2021.

    Trump changes course on Epstein files

    Trump suggested while campaigning last year that he’d seek to open up the government’s case files on Epstein, but changed course in recent months, blaming Democrats and painting the matter as a “hoax” amid questions about what knowledge he may have had about Epstein’s yearslong exploitation of underage girls.

    On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three Epstein email exchanges that referenced Trump, including one from 2019 in which Epstein said the president “knew about the girls” and asked Maxwell to stop.

    White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt accused Democrats of having “selectively leaked emails” to smear Trump.

    Soon after, Republicans on the committee disclosed a far bigger trove of Epstein’s email correspondence, including messages he sent to longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon and to Britain’s former Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Andrew settled a lawsuit out of court with one of Epstein’s victims, who said she had been paid to have sex with the prince.

    The House is speeding toward a vote next week to force the Justice Department to release all files and communications related to Epstein.

    “I don’t care about it, release or not,” Trump said Friday. “If you’re going to do it, then you have to go into Epstein’s friends,” he added, naming Clinton and Hoffman.

    Still, he said: “This is a Democrat hoax. And a couple, a few Republicans have gone along with it because they’re weak and ineffective.”

    __

    Bedayn reported from Denver. Associated Press writer Chris Megerian aboard Air Force One contributed to this report.

    Source link

  • Trump responds to appearance in new Epstein emails by pushing DOJ probe of Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman | Fortune

    President Donald Trump moved aggressively to deflect scrutiny on Friday after a new batch of Jeffrey Epstein’s private emails — released this week by the House Oversight Committee — resurfaced his own long-scrutinized relationship with the disgraced financier.

    Hours after the documents circulated widely online, Trump took to Truth Social with a sweeping demand: he said he will ask Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Department of Justice, and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s ties to “Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions,” claiming that “all arrows point to the Democrats.”

    Bondi quickly agreed, posting on X Friday afternoon that she had assigned Attorney Jay Clayton to the case. Clayton is a high-profile figure among Republicans, having chaired the SEC during Trump’s first term and now acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. 

    Clinton has strongly denied that he had knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. In the emails, Epstein mentioned several times that Clinton was “never on the island.” However, the two knew each other in the early 2000s. Clinton did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

    On the other hand, Summers had a seemingly close and unusually personal relationship with the disgraced financier who at times acted as his informal relationship coach. Newly released emails from 2017 to 2019 show the former Treasury secretary corresponding with Epstein regularly, sometimes multiple times a day, seeking advice about his interactions with a woman in London.

    In one exchange, Summers lamented that the woman had grown distant: “I said what are you up to. She said ‘I’m busy.’ I said awfully coy u are,” he wrote. Epstein replied within minutes, offering reassurance and strategy: “she’s smart. making you pay for past errors. ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy … annoyed shows caring, no whining showed strength.”

    Other emails show Summers forwarding Epstein notes from the woman and asking whether he should respond. “Think no response for a while probably appropriate,” Summers wrote in one case. Epstein encouraged the silence, replying, “She’s already begining to sound needy 🙂 nice.”

    Summers has previously said he regrets his past ties to Epstein. Summers did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

    Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder, billionaire investor and major Democratic donor, had an established relationship with Epstein, according to documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. Schedules show Epstein planned multiple trips with him—including two visits to Epstein’s island, Little St. James in 2014—and arranged for Hoffman to stay overnight at his Manhattan townhouse before attending a “breakfast party” with Bill Gates and others the next morning.

    Hoffman now says he deeply regrets the interactions. “It gnaws at me that, by lending my association, I helped his reputation, and thus delayed justice for his survivors,” he told the Journal. “Ultimately I made the mistake, and I am sorry for my personal misjudgment.”

    Hoffman could not be reached for comment.

    Trump’s inclusion of JPMorgan comes after the bank paid out more than $450 million in 2023 across multiple settlements related to its historic relationship with Epstein — including a $290 million agreement with a class of victims and a $75 million deal with the U.S. Virgin Islands. The bank has repeatedly said it “deeply regrets any association” with Epstein and would not have kept him as a client had it known of his crimes.

    JPMorgan did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

    Epstein repeatedly described Trump in blunt, often hostile terms

    The release of the files — which Trump framed as an effort to expose an “Epstein Hoax” that he claims Democrats are weaponizing to distract from the shutdown– show Epstein repeatedly discussing Trump. They contradict Trump’s own account of their split, and Epstein offers his private, often caustic assessments of the man who would become president.

    Across messages with lawyers, acquaintances, reporters, academics, and political figures, Epstein invoked Trump constantly, often bragging that he possessed insider insight into Trump’s private world. In one 2017 exchange, Epstein dismissed him sharply: “your world does not understand how dumb he really is. he will blame everyone around him.” A year later, he described Trump as “evil beyond belief, mad… nuts!!!” 

    The emails also directly challenge one of Trump’s most frequently repeated claims: that he expelled Epstein from Mar-a-Lago for inappropriate behavior. 

    In a 2019 message to author Michael Wolff, Epstein flatly rejected the story: “Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever.”In another email, Epstein claimed a woman who worked at the club had been involved with him and wrote, “Trump knew of it, and came to my house many times during that period.” The documents do not substantiate these assertions, and the White House has denied them.

    One of the most explosive lines appears in a 2011 note to Ghislaine Maxwell: “that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [Victim] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.” During a press conference, the White House pointed to the testimony of Virginia Giuffre, a prominent Epstein accuser who committed suicide earlier this year and said Trump did not participate “in anything.”

    Epstein also imagined himself as holding leverage over Trump. In a December 2018 exchange, after someone suggested Trump’s critics were simply trying to “take down” the president, Epstein replied: “yes thx. its wild. because i am the one able to take him down.” 

    The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

    Eva Roytburg

    Source link

  • What’s in the explosive Jeffrey Epstein emails accusing Trump? Here is what we know

    The Jeffrey Epstein case took a new twist Wednesday when House Democrats released emails the disgraced financier wrote that mention President Trump. A few hours later, Republicans then released a trove of 20,000 pages of documents.

    Epstein, who died in prison, was accused of orchestrating sex trafficking of young girls. President Trump, a longtime friend of Epstein’s, fell out with the convicted sex offender before he was elected to the nation’s highest office and has denied any involvement in wrongdoing.

    The emails

    • “Of course he knew about the girls,” Epstein said of Trump in an email to author and journalist Michael Wolff in early 2019, when Trump was nearing the end of his first term as president.
    • In another email dated Dec. 15, 2015, Wolff emailed Epstein ahead of a Republican presidential primary debate: “I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you — either on air or in scrum afterwards.” Epstein wrote back, “If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?”
    • In a third email, sent to British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell in 2011, Epstein wrote: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump. [Victim] spent hours at my house with him … he has never once been mentioned.” Maxwell responded: “I have been thinking about that…”

    Read the excerpts here:

    1/3

    Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday released emails from Jeffery Epstein discussing President Trump.  (House Oversight Committee)

    2/3

    Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday released emails from Jeffery Epstein discussing President Trump.  (House Oversight Committee)

    3/3

    Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday released emails from Jeffery Epstein discussing President Trump.  (House Oversight Committee)

    The reaction

    Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that Democrats had “selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.”

    “These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments,” she said in a statement, “and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”

    Democrats, however, say the emails break new ground.

    “The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) said in a statement as he released the documents. “These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the President.”

    The background

    Despite many investigations, there have been no official findings linking Trump to Epstein’s crimes.

    Epstein, a wealthy financier with a deep bench of powerful friends, died in a New York City prison in August 2019 as he faced federal charges in a sprawling child sex-trafficking conspiracy.

    The charges followed reporting by the Miami Herald of a scandalous sweetheart deal brokered by federal prosecutors in Florida that had allowed Epstein to serve a months-long sentence, avoiding federal charges that could have resulted in life imprisonment.

    In July, the Wall Street Journal reported President Trump sent a raunchy 50th birthday letter to Epstein that included a sketch of a naked woman, her breasts and a squiggly “Donald” signature mimicking pubic hair. The president denied writing the letter.

    “These are not my words, not the way I talk,” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “Also, I don’t draw pictures.”

    Jenny Jarvie, Michael Wilner

    Source link

  • Epstein emails say Trump ‘knew about the girls’ and spent time with a victim

    More documents related to Jeffrey Epstein were handed over to the House Oversight Committee this week, including the letter and drawings signed with President Donald Trump’s name in the so-called birthday book. Now ahead of the public release on Monday, Democrats on the committee posted on social media revealing the page first reported on by the Wall Street Journal back in July. While old images circulating online of his signature on other documents do seem to resemble the signature in the. The president has repeatedly denied writing the letter and sued the Wall Street Journal for defamation. White House press secretary Caroline Levitt said in part, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it. The committee also released Epstein’s last will and testament, entries from his address book and the 2007 non-prosecution agreement between Epstein and the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. The panel has been investigating the Epstein case and subpoenaed the estate for documents as part of its ongoing probe. We’ve got *** lot more documents we expect to get in. Uh, we’re gonna bring *** lot of people in for depositions, so this investigation is moving along very rapidly and hopefully we’ll get some answers for and some justice very soon. But some say the committee isn’t going far enough. In *** separate effort, *** bipartisan pair of House lawmakers is working to force *** vote on *** measure calling for the full release of documents related to Epstein. They need 218 signatures on *** discharge petition in order to bypass leadership and force the vote, reporting at the White House, I’m Julie Vanbrook.

    Epstein emails released by Democrats say Trump ‘knew about the girls’ and spent time with a victim

    Updated: 8:11 AM PST Nov 12, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein wrote in a 2011 email that Donald Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s house with a victim of sex trafficking and said in a separate message years later that Trump “knew about the girls,” according to communications released Wednesday.The emails made public by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee add to the questions about Trump’s friendship with Epstein and about any knowledge he may have had in what prosecutors call a yearslong effort by Epstein to exploit underage girls. The Republican president has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s alleged crimes and has said he ended their relationship years ago.The messages are part of a batch of 23,000 documents provided by Epstein’s estate to the Oversight Committee. The release resurfaces a storyline that had shadowed Trump’s presidency during the summer when the FBI and the Justice Department abruptly announced that they would not be releasing additional documents that investigators had spent weeks examining, disappointing conspiracy theorists and online sleuths who had expected to see new revelations.In an April 2, 2011, email to Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein girlfriend now imprisoned for conspiring to engage in sex trafficking, Epstein wrote, “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump. (Redacted name) spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there.”Maxwell replied the same day: “I have been thinking about that.”The name of the person said to have spent time with Trump was blacked out of the email, but House Democrats identified the person as a “victim.”In a separate 2019 email to journalist Michael Wolff, who has written extensively about Trump, Epstein wrote of Trump, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt accused the Democrats of having “selectively leaked emails” to “create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.”She said in a statement that the unnamed person referenced in the emails is Virginia Giuffre, who had accused Britain’s Prince Andrew and other influential men of sexually exploiting her as a teenager and who died by suicide in April. Andrew has rejected Giuffre’s allegations and said he didn’t recall meeting her.Leavitt said in a statement that Giuffre had “repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her in their limited interactions.”“The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including Giuffre,” the statement said. “These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”Giuffre came forward publicly after an initial investigation ended in an 18-month Florida jail term for Epstein, who made a secret deal to avoid federal prosecution by pleading guilty instead to relatively minor state-level charges of soliciting prostitution. He was released in 2009.In subsequent lawsuits, Giuffre said she was a teenage spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, club, when she was approached in 2000 by Maxwell.Epstein took his own life in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges.Lawyers for Maxwell, a British socialite, have argued that she never should have been tried or convicted for her role in luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. She is serving a 20-year prison term, though she was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she was interviewed in July by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

    WASHINGTON —

    Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein wrote in a 2011 email that Donald Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s house with a victim of sex trafficking and said in a separate message years later that Trump “knew about the girls,” according to communications released Wednesday.

    The emails, made public by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, add to the questions about Trump’s friendship with Epstein and about any knowledge he may have had in what prosecutors call a yearslong effort by Epstein to exploit underage girls. The Republican president has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s alleged crimes and has said he ended their relationship years ago.

    In one 2011 email to Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein girlfriend now imprisoned for conspiring to engage in sex trafficking, Epstein wrote, “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump.” He added that Trump had “spent hours at my house” with a person whose name is blacked out of the emails but who House Democrats identified as a “victim.” Epstein wrote that Trump “has never once been mentioned.”

    In a separate email to journalist Michael Wolff, who has written extensively about Trump, Epstein wrote of Trump, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

    The White House did not immediately return a message seeking comment Wednesday.

    Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges.

    Lawyers for Maxwell, a British socialite, have argued that she never should have been tried or convicted for her role in luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. She is serving a 20-year prison term, though she was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she was interviewed in July by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

    Source link

  • Trump ‘knew about the girls,’ Jeffrey Epstein claimed in emails as Democrats, GOP release trove of records

    Donald Trump “spent hours at my house” and “knew about the girls,” Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier accused of orchestrating sex trafficking of young women and underage girls, wrote in private emails released Wednesday by House Democrats.

    The release of a small batch of Epstein’s communications sent shock waves through Washington, prompting a panicked defense of the president from White House aides who accused Democrats of colluding with the media to smear him. It also triggered Republican lawmakers to release an additional 20,000 documents from Epstein’s private estate, a move Democrats said was designed to distract from the implication of Trump.

    But several of the documents shared by the Republicans added fuel to the fire, highlighting Epstein’s interest in Trump in the years after Trump claimed their friendship had come to an end, and suggesting the convicted sex offender had information on the president he was keeping secret.

    By Wednesday afternoon, House Democrats — and a few Republicans — secured enough signatures for a petition that would force a chamber vote on the release of Justice Department files related to the Epstein investigation.

    The drama began Wednesday morning, when Democrats released three of Epstein’s old email exchanges.

    “Of course he knew about the girls,” Epstein said of Trump in an email to author and journalist Michael Wolff in early 2019, during Trump’s first term as president — one of three emails released by Democrats that Epstein sent to Wolff and to Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking after Epstein’s death.

    A few hours after Democrats released three emails referencing Trump — and urged the Department of Justice to release all Epstein documents to the public — Republicans on the House Oversight Committee suddenly dumped a massive trove of documents, portions of which are redacted.

    Those files suggest that even after Trump won the 2016 election — a time when Trump has said he was no longer friends with Epstein — Epstein was deeply interested in Trump’s affairs and possibly involved in some way.

    In May 2017, a New York Times reporter emailed criminal defense attorney Reid Weingarten, then a finalist for Trump’s outside counsel, seeking comment. Weingarten forwarded the email to Epstein less than an hour and a half later: “do you want it? Or Jared?” he asked. It is not clear who Weingarten was referring to, but Jared Kushner was the president’s son-in-law and senior advisor at the time.

    “Do I have the choice?” Epstein replied. “And if so, your view?”

    Multiple people wrote to Epstein apparently under the belief that he could pass information along to Trump or people in his orbit.

    In June 2017, someone whose name has been redacted sent Epstein an email with a link to a YouTube video. “How are u? Send this interview to Donald Trump pls,” the subject line read. “Its going to be everywhere.”

    “ok,” Epstein responded.

    The documents released by Republicans show Epstein cultivating cozy relationships with national figures across the political spectrum, often for the purpose of gathering information and exchanging political gossip and legal opinion on Trump. Among the figures he appears to exchange emails with are Larry H. Summers, former U.S. secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton, and Steve Bannon, Trump’s former advisor.

    The documents released Wednesday are sure to revive questions about Epstein’s relationship with Trump and what the president knew about Epstein’s sexual misconduct with girls and young women.

    Trump has denied knowing anything about Epstein’s crimes, though in July he told reporters he fell out with Epstein over his recruitment of spa workers at Mar-a-Lago. No investigation has tied Trump to Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking of young women.

    “The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) said in a statement as he released the documents.

    “These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the president,” Garcia added.

    Even after the GOP shared thousands of Epstein documents, Trump dismissed the focus on the Epstein files as a Democratic attempt to divert attention from the party’s caving to Republicans on the government shutdown.

    “The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects,” Trump posted on TruthSocial. “Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap… There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!”

    Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that Democrats had “selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.”

    “These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments,” she said in a statement, “and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”

    1/3

    Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday released emails from Jeffery Epstein discussing President Trump.  (House Oversight Committee)

    2/3

    Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday released emails from Jeffery Epstein discussing President Trump.  (House Oversight Committee)

    3/3

    Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday released emails from Jeffery Epstein discussing President Trump.  (House Oversight Committee)

    It is not clear exactly when or how Trump and Epstein’s friendship came to an end.

    When prosecutors brought federal charges against Epstein in 2019, Trump downplayed their relationship and said he hadn’t spoken to Epstein for 15 years. “I had a falling out with him,” Trump told reporters the day after federal authorities took Epstein into custody. “I was not a fan.”

    In the emails released by Democrats, Epstein argued that Trump had more knowledge of Epstein’s affairs than he admitted.

    In the 2019 email to Wolff, which references a ‘victim’ whose name has been redacted, Epstein referred to Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago club: “Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever,” he wrote. “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

    The White House, however, pushed back on the idea that Trump was implicated by that email to Wolff: “The ‘unnamed victim’ referenced in these emails is the late Virginia Giuffre, who repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her in their limited interactions,” Leavitt said.

    “The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including Giuffre,” Leavitt added.

    In another email dated Dec. 15, 2015, Wolff wrote to Epstein ahead of a Republican presidential primary debate: “I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you — either on air or in scrum afterwards.”

    Epstein wrote back: “If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?”

    In a memo released Wednesday, the White House targeted Wolff as a journalist whose record is “riddled with mistakes and inaccuracies.” It cited concerns over his credibility documented in mainstream media outlets, including The Times, the Washington Post and others.

    In a third email, sent to Maxwell in 2011, Epstein wrote: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump. [Victim] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.”

    Maxwell responded: “I have been thinking about that … .”

    The documents released by the GOP indicate that Epstein seemed to have had a special interest in Trump, his political career and his legal troubles. Over the years, the president’s name appears again and again in Epstein’s emails as he and his friends exchange articles about Trump. Some of Epstein’s acquaintances sent him their emailed exchanges with reporters regarding Trump, and in others Epstein is discussing Trump directly with reporters.

    In a June 2018 email exchange with Bannon, at the time a Trump advisor, Bannon shared an article critical of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into the president and his campaign’s ties to Russia, suggesting it was tainted from the start by political bias.

    “Big deal,” Bannon wrote.

    Epstein responded that there were “many open questions” and that it was his belief that “flippers will dictate” the course of the investigation — or that the course of the investigation would be decided by the ability of prosecutors to flip associates of Trump into informants.

    In another 2018 exchange, Epstein appeared to email back and forth with Kathy Ruemmler, attorney and former White House counsel under President Obama, on former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s cooperation with prosecutors.

    After Ruemmler sent Epstein a link to a New York Times story referencing Cohen pleading guilty to violating campaign finance laws to pay adult filmmaker Stormy Daniels, Epstein wrote, “you see, i know how dirty donald is. My guess is that non lawyers ny biz people have no idea. What it means to have your fixer flip.”

    Before the 2024 presidential election, Trump called for the release of more documents related to Epstein, but his administration appears to have backtracked on its promises to release documents.

    Garcia called on the Department of Justice on Wednesday to release all Epstein files to the public immediately. “The Oversight Committee will continue pushing for answers and will not stop until we get justice for the victims,” he said in a statement.

    By the afternoon, Adelita Grijalva, a Democratic congresswoman from Arizona who was sworn in to office earlier in the day, became the 218th House member to sign a petition that would force a vote on releasing files from the Epstein investigation. Her signature kicked off a countdown of seven legislative days for House Speaker Mike Johnson to schedule a vote on the matter.

    As Democrats push the Justice Department to release the files, GOP leaders are pressuring some Republicans to remove their names from the petition. The White House confirmed that senior administration officials met with Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert on Wednesday about the issue.

    Epstein, 66, died by suicide in a New York jail in August 2019, weeks after he was arrested and charged in federal court with sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors. A watchdog report released last year found that negligence, misconduct and other failures at the jail contributed to his death.

    More than a decade earlier, Epstein evaded federal criminal charges when he struck a plea deal in a Florida case related to accusations that he molested dozens of girls.

    As part of the agreement, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges, including soliciting prostitution. He registered as a sex offender and served 13 months in jail but was allowed to leave six days a week to work at his office.

    Jenny Jarvie, Michael Wilner, Kevin Rector

    Source link

  • Backpage.com Trafficking Victims Eligible For Federal Compensation – KXL


    Robin Miller and SDDA JR Ujifusa stand with more than 1,200 notices to be mailed to sex trafficking survivors. Oct. 10, 2025

    Portland, Ore. – A local district attorney’s office takes the unique step to notify human trafficking survivors they may be entitled to federal compensation.

    Federal investigators shut down Backpage.com in 2018. For 14 years, the elicit website facilitated commercial sex and human trafficking. JR Ujifusa supervises the human trafficking team at the Multnomah County DA’s office. “In order to advertise, or to sell someone on their website, you would have to pay. It started out as cash, and it moved to Bitcoin,” says Ujifusa, “When the FBI and the federal government shut down Backpage, they seized their assets.”

    That money is now available to survivors through the U.S. Department of Justice Backpage Remission Program. “I’m glad that their money is going back into the hands of those that they did that to, that they harmed,” says survivor-turned-advocate Robin Miller. 

    The Multnomah County DA’s office is sending letters and applications to people involved in previous cases. “Through searching our databases, we have identified over 1,200 individuals that we believe may have been exploited, may have been used on Backpage.com, either as minors or adults,” says Ujifusa.  Miller asks, “How many of these envelopes are representative of children who were bought and sold on Backpage?” She adds, “I want to remind everybody why Backpage was shut down: They were selling children. And men were buying children, and women and vulnerable populations off the website for years.”

    The DOJ estimates more than $200 million are available for victims across the country. Survivors and their families have until February to apply for the money either online or through the mail. 

    More about:


    Heather Roberts

    Source link

  • A Timeline Of The Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sex Trafficking & Racketeering Trial

    Sean “Diddy” Combs has been sentenced to more than four years in prison.

    Source: Sean “Diddy” Combs – Picture / Sean “Diddy” Combs – Picture provided by Canva

    U.S. District Court Judge Arun Subramanian sentenced the disgraced music mogul to 50 months behind bars, per NBC News.

    Following his highly publicized trial, prosecutors sought an 11-year, three-month prison term for his Mann Act conviction, while the defense was trying for a 14-month sentence, which would amount to time served.

    Combs, 55, was taken into custody in September last year. His sentence will include the year-plus he has already spent behind bars.

    The long-running Diddy sex trafficking, racketeering, and prostitution case has finally been wrapped up. According to CNN, sentencing recommendations from the defense, prosecution, and probation departments differed tremendously.

    As previously reported, in July, Combs was convicted on two counts of transporting women for prostitution under the Mann Act, specifically for the transportation of former girlfriend Jane and the transportation of ex-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura. Each charge carried a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Federal prosecutors were pushing for a sentence of more than 11 years, arguing that Combs physically and emotionally abused girlfriends and employees over the course of many years, all while showing no remorse for his actions.

    His defense team, on the other hand, asked for no more than 14 months, including time already served. They strongly believed that the judge should disregard any testimony or evidence tied to charges Combs was acquitted of, including allegations that he coerced victims.

    If the judge sided with the defense, Combs could have been released from federal custody almost immediately. Meanwhile, the court’s probation department recommended a sentence between 70 and 87 months. Earlier today, the judge stated there’s no clear reason to stray from those guidelines.

    Here’s everything that’s happened throughout the case. 

    November 2023 – Cassie filed a lawsuit against Combs.

    Diddy and Cassie at Meta Gala 2018
    Source: Taylor Hill / Getty

    On Nov. 17, 2023, Cassie filed a lawsuit under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, accusing Combs of rape, sex trafficking, drug abuse, coercion, and repeated violence over the course of their decades-long relationship. 

    The next day, Combs quickly settled the lawsuit, with terms kept confidential. 

    “I have decided to resolve this matter amicably on terms that I have some level of control,” Ventura said in a statement at the time. “I want to thank my family, fans, and lawyers for their unwavering support.”

    Combs added, “We have decided to resolve this matter amicably. I wish Cassie and her family all the best.”

    But the lawsuit was just the tip of the iceberg. Soon, several other alleged victims brought additional civil lawsuits alleging sexual assault, forced drugging, and abuse during past relationships with the hip-hop mogul. 

    March 2024 – Sean “Diddy” Combs’ homes in LA and Miami were raided by Homeland Security. 

    March 2024 - Sean "Diddy" Combs homes in LA and Miami were raided by Homeland Security. 
    Source: MEGA / Getty

    In March 2024, properties owned by Combs in Los Angeles and Miami were raided by Homeland Security agents. According to Page Six, the Miami raid uncovered what FBI agents described as “a slew of weapons, several boxes of high-heeled heels typically worn by exotic dancers and lingerie, bottles of baby oil and lubricant, and various bags filled with narcotics.” Meanwhile, the Los Angeles search revealed a similar scene, an “array of weapons” along with a staggering 200 bottles of baby oil and 900 bottles of lubricant, reportedly found scattered throughout the home, including in Combs’ bedroom.

    May 2024: Video of Diddy assaulting Cassie in 2016 surfaces.

    Sean “Diddy” Combs, cassie, sex trafficking, racketeering
    Source: Gotham / Getty

    On May 17, 2024, CNN released surveillance footage showing Combs physically assaulting Cassie during a 2016 incident that closely mirrored the allegations outlined in her November 2023 lawsuit. 

    The video showed the former singer and mother leaving a hotel room and walking toward an elevator before Combs, wearing only a towel, chased after her. He grabbed her by the neck and threw her to the ground. As Cassie lay motionless, Combs was seen violently kicking her and then walking away with her purse and suitcase.

    September 2024 – Diddy was indicted. 

    Sean 'Diddy' Combs
    Source: Getty / General

    Months later, on Sept. 16, 2024, he was arrested in New York on a federal indictment charging him with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, and transportation to engage in prostitution. Combs pleaded not guilty. Multiple bail requests were denied.

    May 2025 – The Diddy sex trafficking and racketeering trial began.

    Marc Agnifilo, the lead defense attorney for Sean "Diddy" Combs
    Source: The Washington Post / Getty

    The rapper and hip-hop icon’s trial officially began May 5 in federal court in Lower Manhattan, led by Judge Arun Subramanian. Jury selection occupied the early days, and opening statements began May 12. Over the next several weeks, testimony was heard from alleged victims, employees, experts, and others, with the prosecution presenting evidence such as videos, travel logs, and witness accounts. 

    Prosecutors opened the trial by alleging that the Grammy-winner used his fame, power, and wealth to operate a criminal enterprise that enabled his so-called “freak offs,” drug-fueled sex parties involving both paid sex workers and unwilling participants. They claimed Combs used violence, intimidation, and coercion to force victims—including his ex-girlfriend Cassie—to participate in these disturbing encounters.

    Some of the most significant testimony came early in the Diddy trial. LAPD officer Israel Florez, who previously worked in hotel security, was the first witness to take the stand. He testified about being on duty at the Intercontinental Hotel in March 2016, the day surveillance footage captured Combs dragging and kicking Cassie in a hallway.

    Later, another witness, Daniel Phillip—a male stripper—testified that he was paid thousands of dollars to perform sex acts with the songstress while Combs watched. He recounted an incident from around 2012 or 2013, describing how Combs allegedly became enraged when Cassie didn’t respond to him immediately. According to Phillip, Combs threw a liquor bottle at her and then dragged her by the hair into a bedroom, where he appeared to physically assault her. Phillip said he was too afraid to intervene, especially with Combs’ bodyguards present.

    But the most devastating testimony came from Cassie herself. As reported by NewsOne, during the first week of the trial, she gave a harrowing account of the years of alleged abuse, control, and humiliation she suffered while in a relationship with the hip-hop mogul. She painted a chilling picture of what life was like behind the glamorous façade, recounting not only the physical assaults but also the psychological torment of being forced to participate in the infamous “freak offs.”

    “He would smash me in my head, knock me over, drag me, kick me, stomp me in the head if I was down,” Cassie testified at the time of the abuse she endured.

    The “Me & U” singer claimed that after one particularly brutal assault in 2008, Combs made her recover in isolation at a hotel. In another haunting moment, Cassie said she wore sunglasses to a red carpet premiere to hide the bruises left on her face. She also described the toll these encounters took on her health, stating that she developed frequent urinary tract infections from back-to-back “freak offs,” to the point where antibiotics no longer worked.

    July 2025 – Diddy found not guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking.

    Defense lawyers at the Sean "Diddy" Combs sex trafficking and racketeering trial
    Source: LEONARDO MUNOZ / Getty

    After three days of jury deliberations, a verdict was delivered July 2 for the Diddy sex trafficking and racketeering trial. Combs was found not guilty of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking by force/fraud/coercion charges, but guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution under the Mann Act. His sentencing was scheduled for Oct. 3.

    September 2025: Cassie pens a heartbreaking letter to the court ahead of sentencing, “I’m so scared.” 

    Cassie
    Source: Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty

    As previously reported, ahead of the Oct. 3 sentencing hearing for the Diddy sex trafficking and racketeering trial, Cassie once again pleaded with the court, detailing the years of abuse and psychological manipulation she fought through while with Combs. In a powerful three-page victim impact statement obtained by Rolling Stone, she expressed not only the trauma of her past but also the fear she continues to live with today.

    “I am so scared that if he walks free, his first actions will be swift retribution towards me and others who spoke up,” she wrote, making it clear that Combs’ release would not just be a legal outcome; it would be a threat to her safety and that of other victims.

    “For four days in May, while nine months pregnant, I testified in front of a packed courtroom about the most traumatic and horrifying chapter in my life,” she added. Today, she says she lives “as private and quiet as possible,” constantly looking over her shoulder, fearing what could happen if Combs walks free.

    Shannon Dawson

    Source link

  • OMG! An Epstein List Name REVEALED! Plus MAJOR CLUES About Others In Congressional Hearing! – Perez Hilton

    Are these the biggest clues yet about who exactly is in the Epstein files?!? Plus an actual name?! HOW IS THIS NOT THE BIGGEST STORY RIGHT NOW???

    Donald Trump and his loyal DOJ and FBI leaders shocked some of the MAGA faithful with their about-face on Jeffrey Epstein. They went from teasing a big reveal to actually having teams of agents spend hundreds of hours reading the files… and suddenly deciding it all needed to be swept under the rug.

    Well, a small handful of Republicans have stood up to Trump on the Epstein issue, and their leader, Representative Thomas Massie from Kentucky, finally got one of those rug-sweepers in the hot seat this week.

    Kash Patel has been testifying to Congress the past couple days, being grilled on numerous scandals and mistakes, by Democrats and Republicans alike. But on Wednesday, Massie got to ask the biggest question we think America has right now: WTF?!?

    Kash In Pocket

    OK, Massie didn’t say that. But he did confront the seemingly confused FBI director about his inane claim to the Senate on Tuesday that Epstein didn’t traffic the girls to anyone. If you missed that claim, Patel maintained to Senator John Kennedy:

    “There is no credible information, none… that he trafficked to other individuals.”

    So Jeffrey Epstein trafficked underage girls to NO ONE? Despite the victims saying very clearly they were trafficked to powerful men? Well, Massie made his big play here. When Epstein’s victims got together and said they’d make their own list, Massie said he and Marjorie Taylor Greene might be able to reveal it even if the girls couldn’t themselves. And on Wednesday he gave us the first name! He defied Patel, saying:

    “According to victims who cooperated with the FBI in that investigation, these documents in FBI possession — in your possession — detail at least 20 men, including Mr. Jes Staley, CEO of Barclays Bank, who Jeffrey Epstein trafficked victims to.”

    Whoa, what?!?

    HE ACTUALLY NAMED SOMEONE! HE DROPPED A NAME FROM THE EPSTEIN LIST! HOW IS THIS NOT THE BIGGEST STORY OF THE DAY?!

    The First Name

    Who the heck is James Edward “Jes” Staley? A few months after Epstein’s death, the CEO of Barclays was investigated for mischaracterizing his relationship with him. Ultimately he resigned from his position.

    (c) Bloomberg/YouTube

    He was later named in a lawsuit against JP Morgan. An Epstein victim accused the bank of enabling Epstein financially — and Staley specifically of knowing exactly what he was doing. According to The New York Times, Staley was Epstein’s “chief defender” at JP Morgan, helping him keep his huge accounts despite suspicions he was up to no good. The lawsuit, revealed in January 2023, alleged Staley personally witnessed Epstein’s abuse of an underage girl.

    Related: Staley Was On This List With Trump…

    Why would he look the other way, so to speak? Well, it sounds like Massie says one of the victims told the government she’d been trafficked TO HIM!

    Currently he’s only facing civil and financial consequences.

    Major Effing Clues!

    Massie was far from finished. He may have only given one actual name, but he made very clear there’s a list of men accused of wrongdoing, and it’s in the government’s hands. He spoke about the men who were named by Epstein’s victims — and gave some major clues on who they are! He said:

    “That list also includes at least 19 other individuals: One Hollywood producer worth a few hundred million dollars. One royal prince. One high profile individual in the music industry. One very prominent banker. One high profile government official. One high profile former politician. One owner of a car company in Italy. One rock star. One magician. At least six billionaires, including a billionaire from Canada. We know these people exist in the FBI files, the files you control. I don’t know exactly who they are, but the FBI does. Have you launched investigations into any of these individuals?”

    YOWZA! That is a lot of clues all at once!

    Well, look, the Royal prince one is easy. Prince Andrew is one of the only men who have been accused publicly. Virginia Roberts Giuffre claimed she was trafficked to him by Epstein multiple times, including when she was just 17 years old. Here they are together in a photo with Epstein’s convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.

    Prince Andrew Virginia Roberts scandal
    (c) BBC/WENN

    As for the “high profile government official” and “high profile former politician”? Pretty horrific to know our taxes have supported people like this, isn’t it?

    And then there’s “magician” — what a wild profession to throw out, right? But probably the most intriguing to us? A rich Hollywood producer?? A “rock star”? A “high profile individual in the music industry”?? Our minds are racing with ideas, though we’ve never, to our recollection, heard of any connection between Epstein and any specific people who fit these bills. Do YOU know who he’s talking about??

    Anyway, let’s check back in on what Patel has to say for himself…

    Kash Tries To Pass The Buck

    When Patel tried to reiterate that he hadn’t seen credible evidence yet, Massie pressed, remind him VICTIM TESTIMONY is evidence! He straight up asked the FBI head:

    “Is it your assertion that these victims aren’t credible? That the 302s maybe didn’t produce credible statements that rise to probable cause?”

    Patel said it was the decision of US attorneys, noting some were in past administrations. Totally passing the buck. Massie didn’t let him get away with it. He

    “Have you viewed the 302 documents where they victims name the people who victimized them?”

    Patel admitted he has not “personally” viewed the documents in question. So Massie hit him with:

    “So how can you sit here, and in front of the Senate, and say there are no names? I named one today.”

    He sure as hell did.

    Patel squirmed again, saying the FBI won’t release “victim names” or “in-credible evidence.” So let’s see if we’ve got this right… Despite the fact he was such a vocal crusader for the Epstein list before this job, Patel hasn’t made it a priority to personally look at any of this evidence, any of the victim testimony, in the nearly SEVEN MONTHS he’s been on the job. Instead, he’s totally satisfied being told there’s nothing to see, and he’s accepted that without looking for himself??

    Yeah, it didn’t sound like Massie bought any of that. You can see his full interrogation (below):

    Out Of The Frying Pan…

    Look, so far we’ve only been speaking about Kash Patel getting grilled by Republicans. But when it came to Dems, it was pretty bad, too. Though it did lean a little worse for Trump, as you might imagine…

    Eric Swalwell asked Patel did he ever “tell Donald Trump his name is in the files?” The FBI director said he’d never spoken to Trump about Epstein files. (Wow, but OK.) So Swalwell asked next:  

    “Did you ever tell the the Attorney General that Trump’s name is in the Epstein files?”

    This should have been a simple NO, right? Instead Patel gave a non-answer, saying:

    “The attorney general and I have had numerous discussions about the entirety of the Epstein files and the reviews conducted by our team.”

    Yeah, definitely didn’t answer that one. So Swalwell pressed him on it, asking again if he’d ever told the AG that Trump’s name was in the Epstein files. Patel again tried to skate around the answer, saying:

    “During many conversations that the Attorney General and I have had on the matter of Epstein, we have reviewed…”

    Swalwell wasn’t having it. He said, “The question is simple,” asking again sarcastically slowly. Patel refused to answer and started attacking Swalwell and his home state of California instead. Eventually the Congressman had to give up and said simply:

    “We’ll take your evasiveness as consciousness of guilt.”

    It went on like that with some others. At no time, speaking to either side of the aisle, did Patel look like he had any interest in getting to the truth about Epstein and his co-conspirators. Shame.

    Do you want Congress to demand release of the full Epstein files? Learn how to peacefully contact your reps to demand action at https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials.

    [Image via DOJ/MEGA/WENN/CBS News/Bloomberg/YouTube.]

    Perez Hilton

    Source link

  • Michael Tracey: Cutting through the Jeffrey Epstein fog

    What is the Jeffrey Epstein story, and what does it mean? Just asking questions.

    Today’s conversation is with journalist Michael Tracey, who has been picking apart what he calls the “Epstein mythology” for the past several weeks over at his Substack. In short, he thinks 90 percent of what most people believe about this case is false, and that this is mostly the fault of credulous establishment journalists who chose to uncritically publish alleged victims’ narratives and ignore inconvenient facts, as well as opportunistic alternative media figures who spun the story into a sprawling conspiracy for political and personal gain. 

    Tracey has been attacked and on the attack, and you’ll hear him air his many grievances with other journalists, lawyers, and politicians in this conversation, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.), whom he calls out as his “enemy” because she instructed police to remove him from an Epstein-related press conference after he asked a question about an accusers’ credibility in Washington D.C. this week.  

    The goal of this episode was to move beyond the personality clashes and egos and wild speculation and drill down into what it is we actually know and don’t know about Jeffrey Epstein. But as we talked, it became clear that this kind of detached analysis just wasn’t going to be possible, that the egos and the clashes and the agendas remain intricately tied up with how this story has unfolded. The incentives faced by establishment journalists, podcasters, accusers, and politicians have shaped this story and our understanding of it, mostly for the worse. 

    But in the marketplace of ideas, there is also a countervailing incentive to move against the herd and correct the record. And maybe a turbulent and confrontational personality like Michael Tracey–who admits in this interview that he’s “wired differently”–was exactly what was needed to break taboos, ask uncomfortable questions, and push for real disclosure about the nature of the story that has loomed over American politics for at least a decade.

    Regardless of how one feels about Tracey’s tone or the soundness of his analysis, anyone who purports to care about this story should at least engage with the questions he’s asking and start asking their own questions about what the Epstein story really means.

    This conversation has been edited for time and clarity.

    Mentioned in the podcast:

    1. U.S. v. Jeffrey Epstein
    2. Epstein “provided information” to the FBI: FBI Records: The Vault — Jeffrey Epstein Part 06
    3. “Jeffrey Epstein’s Sick Story Played Out for Years in Plain Sight,” by Vicky Ward
    4. 2020 Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility Report on Epstein
    5. Justice Department interview of Ghislaine Maxwell 
    6. “A Look Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan Lair,” by David Enrich, Matthew Goldstein, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, and Steve Eder
    7. “Jeffrey Epstein Appeared to Threaten Bill Gates Over Microsoft Co-Founder’s Affair With Russian Bridge Player,” by Khadeeja Safdar and Emily Glazer
    8. “THE MEDIA BUSINESS; Maxwell Is Buried In Jerusalem,” by Clyde Haberman
    9. “Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Spy Industry Connections,” by Matthew Petti
    10. Donald Trump retweets #ClintonBodyCount conspiracy
    11. Trump on Truth Social: “Nobody cares about” Jeffrey Epstein
    12. Justice Department/FBI Memo on “Epstein Files,” July 2025
    13. Virginia Giuffre v. Ghislaine Maxwell
    14. “The Billionaire’s Play Club,” by Virginia Roberts
    15. July 24, 2025, proffer by Ghislaine Maxwell
    16. Labor Secretary Alex Acosta’s July 2019 press conference
    17. “Prince Andrew & the Epstein Scandal: The Newsnight Interview,” by BBC News
    18. Security camera footage from Jeffrey Epstein’s prison block
    19. Michael Tracey booted from Epstein presser, September 3, 2025.

    Zach Weissmueller

    Source link

  • GirlsDoPorn.Com owner sentenced 27 years for sex trafficking conspiracy

    Michael James Pratt. (FILE photo courtesy of the FBI)

    The owner of the San Diego-based GirlsDoPorn.com website, which featured pornographic videos of young women who were forced or coerced into appearing in the films under false pretenses, was sentenced to 27 years in federal prison Monday.

    Michael James Pratt, described by prosecutors as “the ringleader in a wide-ranging sex-trafficking conspiracy” surrounding the now-defunct website, pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking.

    Prosecutors said the website’s operators led women to believe the videos in which they appeared would be distributed only to private customers living outside of the country and that their identities would not be exposed. But the goal was always to post the videos on the internet as part of the scheme, which netted Pratt “millions of dollars in profit,” prosecutors said.

    Victims were given false promises by Pratt and other GirlsDoPorn.com employees, which included “reference girls” who falsely assured victims that they had participated in past videos that were never posted online.

    After their videos were posted and proliferated to their family, friends, and employers, many of the women said they pleaded with GirlsDoPorn’s leadership to take down their videos, but their requests were refused or ignored.

    U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino sentenced Pratt to more than the nearly 22 years requested by federal prosecutors due to what she said was “the sheer scope and magnitude of this offense.”

    Pratt’s sentencing hearing spanned nearly six hours and featured testimonials from almost 40 victims, including the mother of a young woman who died of a drug overdose in the years after her video was released. Victims who spoke Monday said at least 15 women they knew who appeared in GirlsDoPorn videos have since died from suicide or other causes.

    Many of the women said they have spent years and countless amounts of money trying to scrub evidence of their videos from the internet, with little to no success.

    “The scariest part is the internet doesn’t forget,” one woman said.

    Numerous victims said those videos were re-posted by people online featuring their full names and other personal identifying information, leading to an onslaught of harassment that follows them to this day.

    One woman said that just when she thought she’d escaped the specter of the video filmed over a decade ago, screenshots of it resurfaced on the social media page of her new job, leading her to quit. Several said that people in their lives who discovered their videos — including former friends and co- workers — have attempted to blackmail them in exchange for their silence.

    Victims spoke of legally changing their names and surgically altering their appearances to avoid recognition. Many said they turned to self- medication with drugs and/or alcohol, and spoke of suicide attempts or suicidal thoughts.

    Prosecutors say Pratt was the mastermind behind the coercive scheme and had a hands-on role in creating the videos, including sometimes manning the camera, recruiting women who appeared in videos, and transporting the women to and from video shoots.

    After victims were flown out to San Diego — where the majority of the website’s content was filmed — they were presented with contracts that concealed the true purpose of the scheme, prosecutors said. Rather than stating the videos were for GirlsDoPorn, the companies were referred to as Bubblegum Casting, BLL Media, or other innocuous, misleading names.

    The U.S. Attorney’s Office said some victims were told they could be sued or their flights home canceled if they didn’t complete the videos, and that the doors at video shoot locations were often blocked by cameras and recording equipment, leaving the victims feeling “powerless and unable to leave.”

    Defense attorney Brian White conceded in his sentencing papers that Pratt misled the women about where their videos would end up.

    “Mr. Pratt now recognizes those misrepresentations were reckless, fraudulent, and ultimately harmful to many women,” White wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

    However, he argued that Pratt was not involved with any mistreatment of victims during the video shoots and stated he took measures to ensure safety during filming.

    The defense filing also alleged that “erratic and unpredictable” conduct from porn actor Ruben Andre Garcia — who was in all the videos involving the victims in the case — was unknown to Pratt, such as providing alcohol and marijuana to the women or engaging in “`extracurricular’ contact with the models.”

    Several victims pushed back on that claim though. One woman said that during the filming of her video, she begged Pratt to halt the video shoot, but he refused.

    White also wrote that doorways at the filming locations were not intentionally barricaded, but that the rooms were merely cramped and offered little to no room to store the equipment.

    “There was no intention to block access to the door, it was simply a convenient place to store the empty crates and boxes during filming,” the memorandum states.

    White wrote that Pratt made efforts to protect women’s identities from being publicly released after a website was launched by another person, which exposed many of the victims’ names. The attorney wrote that Pratt purchased the site with the intention of shutting it down.

    Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexandra Foster said that whatever Pratt’s intention, he continued to recruit women for GirlsDoPorn while knowing their identities weren’t being safeguarded and continued to lie to them about the videos going online.

    Along with criminal charges, the website’s operators were sued by 22 women featured in the videos, including several who spoke Monday. The civil lawsuit led to a nearly $13 million verdict against GirlsDoPorn in early 2020.

    Pratt left the country after the civil trial got underway. After criminal charges were filed, Pratt spent more than three years on the lam, and was at one time on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted list. He was arrested in Spain in late 2022.

    Pratt is among the last GirlsDoPorn employees to be sentenced in the long-running criminal case.

    Sammartino has sentenced several of his co-defendants, including Garcia, who received a 20-year sentence, Pratt’s ex-business partner, Matthew Isaac Wolfe, who was sentenced to 14 years, and camera operator Theodore Gyi, who was sentenced to four years in prison.

    Another co-defendant, Alexander Brian Foster, was sentenced to one year in prison for creating a video meant to harass and publicly identify the 22 women who sued GirlsDoPorn. Prosecutors said the video –which was never completed or released — was made at Pratt’s direction, and that he instructed Foster to include video clips of the women’s videotaped depositions from the civil case, their Instagram posts and video footage of them leaving the courthouse.

    Later this week, GirlsDoPorn bookkeeper Valorie Moser is scheduled to be sentenced. Prosecutors say Moser largely performed administrative tasks for the company, but was aware of the trafficking scheme and attempted to recruit models for the website.

    Another defendant, Douglas Wiederhold, also awaits sentencing later this year. According to his plea agreement, Wiederhold appeared as a male actor in 71 GirlsDoPorn videos and also falsely assured at least two women that their videos wouldn’t be posted online after knowing other women’s videos had already been uploaded to the internet.

    The website’s activities also spurred dual lawsuits from more than 100 women against the parent company for porn-streaming site PornHub for profiting off of GirlsDoPorn’s trafficking by hosting its videos. The company reached settlements with the women in both lawsuits and also agreed to pay over $1.8 million to resolve a probe by federal prosecutors who alleged the company knew or should have known it was accepting money that originated from sex- trafficking operations.

    — City News Service


    Source link

  • Portland Police Continues To Crack Down On Sex Trafficking – KXL

    PORTLAND, Ore. – More than 20 people have arrested or cited since late July for alleged sex trafficking.

    Portland Police has joined multiple agencies for focused enforcement efforts along Northeast 82nd Avenue and Northeast Sandy Boulevard in response to growing community concerns and persistent livability issues tied to sex trafficking.

    Twenty people were arrested or cited for charges including commercial sexual solicitation and unlawful prostitution procurement activities.

    The individuals arrested include:

    • Dires Akalu, 45, Portland

    • Josue Bernabe-Gonzales, 25, Kelso, Wash.

    • Tomas Bulux-Velasquez, 32, Vancouver, Wash.

    • Todd Campbell, 26, Spanaway, Wash.

    • Jordin Chacaj-Lopez, 23, Hillsboro

    • Pedro Francisco-Mateo, 48, Portland

    • Samuel Gavrilita, 21, Vancouver, Wash.

    • Elias Garcia-Perez, 26, Vancouver, Wash.

    • Melito Guillermo, 20, Portland

    • Jason Kobbe, 24, Beaverton

    • Julien Krein, 24, Gresham

    • Jose Luengo-Bastarrica, 29, Portland

    • Oscar Martinez-Amaro, 25, Portland

    • Paul Newton, 52, Mt. Angel

    • Brandon Pedroza, 32, Sherwood

    • Jermick Phaynid, 24, Portland

    • Kevin Shults, 66, Portland

    • Matthew Stoner, 32, Portland

    • Alejandro Vargas-Manzano, 46, Gresham

    • Kevin Zurita-Varela, 19, Portland

    Officers also towed five vehicles, recovered at least one firearm, and collected intelligence related to suspected traffickers and buyers.

    More about:

    Grant McHill

    Source link