Federal judge orders documents naming Jeffrey Epstein's associates to be unsealed

Mattster_Of_Puppets@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 1209 points –
Federal judge orders documents naming Jeffrey Epstein's associates to be unsealed
abcnews.go.com
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Why this list was ever sealed to begin with is beyond me.

Because powerful people were his associates. I'm surprised it is being unsealed.

I'm not surprised it was ordered to be unsealed. I'll be more than a little surprised if an accurate list is actually unsealed. But, anything's possible I guess.

“Those on the list were allowed to redact whatever parts they liked”

Deborah Jeane Palfrey has entered the chat. I swear I remember seeing news stories at the time saying that she'd specifically told family members: I'm not planning to kill myself, but I am threatening to release the identities of powerful men who made use of my services. If I die it's because they killed me.

But now, all I can find is that it was clearly a suicide. Oh well.

Edit: Someone argued with me enough about it that I actually tried to read up on it, and I think what I was remembering was that Alex Jones said that if she died it's because they killed her, and some people reported on that, along with some carefully cherry-picked quotes from her interview on his show. She did say that she wasn't planning to kill herself, but only because he directly asked her as part of his normal Alex Jones shtick, and of course she said "no." But she never said that on any other program, as far as I can tell, and everyone reliable who investigated concluded that the suicide was probably real. So the mystery is resolved. Sounds like she killed herself. 😢 At least I learned something today.

She actually said the exact opposite. From your link:

Palfrey's two handwritten notes were released to the public. In one of them, she wrote to her sister, "You must comprehend there was no way out, I.E. 'exit strategy,' for me other than the one I have chosen here." In another, she described her predicament as a "modern-day lynching". She said she feared that, at the end of serving her sentence, she would be "in my late 50s a broken, penniless and very much alone woman".[28][30]

Emphasis mine.

Yes, I read the sources I linked to. Here's what I said about it:

But now, all I can find is that it was clearly a suicide. Oh well.

What did you think I was talking about, what I said that? If not that the stories I can find now all say it was a legit suicide?

Maybe my memory is faulty, or maybe the suicide note is fake. Which it is, I have no idea.

Seems very unlikely that two handwritten suicide notes could be plausibly faked that well when there are many examples of her handwriting

Wait. So you're evaluating the theory that powerful people in the US government killed a woman, faked two (...) suicide notes for her, successfully coerced her lawyer into not divulging her client list (which he has, and desperately wants to divulge), and put down the memory hole all the original news stories that talked about her being afraid she'd be killed for threatening her clients with exposure... but the fly in the whole ointment of the theory is that they'd have to find someone who could write similar to how she writes?

Honestly, I think I'm probably misremembering, and I'm mixing her up with some other person that powerful people actually did have killed. Not because the note was handwritten; I just think there would be places on the internet that were pretty readily findable where would be published the original stories I read back at the time.

I wasn't trying to get into all of this, tbh, because like I say I'm just sort of talking and have no idea. I was just relaying my (maybe faulty) memories and letting people be their own judge.

Edit: Oh fuck, the plot thickens. I found what I was thinking of. According to randos on Reddit, she explicitly talked about not having any plans to kill herself on an episode of Alex Jones which is no longer easily available. Make of that what you will 😃.

Well if it's on Alex Jones it must be true. He's famously a very sober and serious reporter.

Also it's fun how you mix conspiracy theories and foreign nationals in your links, as if that somehow makes your case.

Conspiracy theories make conspiracy theorists look like idiots. You don't want to be that guy.

Dude why are you talking down to me so aggressively?

I guess we're arguing now 🤷. That honesty wasn't my intent here; IDK how you got so much of "making my case" out of me saying so repeatedly that I was just saying what I remembered and don't really know the facts. I'm just sort of talking. I'm such a dickhead that I'm listening to another interview with her right now looking for something relevant that I can use to "make my case" so I can know what I'm talking about, if you're gonna get rude with me about it.

I'm aware that Alex Jones said a lot of things about her, and I agree that that doesn't mean anything at all. What she said in his interview is relevant. Where she said it doesn't change that. Would you agree with that? I haven't seen anything she's been quoted as saying in the interview that really means all that much, so maybe the "if I die it was the government" stuff is Jones's creation. In which case, yeah, it's garbage. If she said that on the Alex Jones show, I'd consider that pretty significant. Right? Or no?

(Edit: She was quoted in the normal-person press as saying she wasn't planning to kill herself, but that was in response to Alex Jones directly asking her whether she was, so if that's all she said, that means nothing. Whatever she was thinking at that point or later on, I wouldn't expect her to say "oh yeah, it's funny you ask, yes I am" when he asks her.)

(Edit: After skim-listening to an interview with her somewhere else and reading some of the Wikipedia talk page where people are arguing about this subject, I think you're right and it was all just an Alex Jones creation. Oh well. I updated my original post to reflect my learning.)

Which of the people I listed do you think are conspiracy theories? Gary Webb was an American killed by Americans in government. Jamal Kashoggi was a naturalized American who was killed by the Saudis with tacit approval by the US government. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a non American killed by non Americans, so maybe that's not that relevant, no. They were literally just random examples I picked out to show that it's not a totally outlandish idea. People kill each other for various reasons every day; if it never happened when one of them was powerful, that would be weird. What out of all that do you consider to be a conspiracy theory?

I wasn't talking down to you at all. You mixed real things and fake things to support a claim you yourself acknowledge is probably nonsense.

That is indeed a bad look, and people should be warned lest they fall into conspiratorial thinking, because it is neither healthy for the person nor an effective way of looking at the world.

Gary Webb was an American killed by Americans in government.

This is exceedingly unlikely.

Yeah. Shot in the head. Twice. He just wasn't successful with that first shot and had enough bearings to fix it with the second. So said the CIA and we should all believe them just like the totally-not-a-pedophile-priest.

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You mixed real things and fake things to support a claim you yourself acknowledge is probably nonsense.

My god, are you this pleasant to deal with in real life? I didn't "acknowledge is probably nonsense." I said, hey this is what I think, but I don't really know. Your right answer to that is something along the lines of: Hey there's a lot of evidence that this is how it happened, here it is. Instead you concocted some kind of scenario where I am "making my case" and you need to get sarcastic with me and assign me strawman views and argue against them all condescendingly.

I just looked into Gary Webb, and hey, you're right, he actually probably did kill himself also. So I learned two things today. But because you were such a jackass about it, that's actually sort of difficult to admit, where if you'd just said "hey I think this is wrong, his ex-wife said he was acting weird and she believes it was suicide, here's the source" then it could have been a more factual conversation. It happens that I'm patient enough to go and look at sources myself even if you're being combative with me, but most people won't do that. They'll just be toxic back at you and both of you will waste a bunch of time "making your case." That's an inherent risk of talking with people on the internet but you don't need to lean into it when the other person's just being open minded and reasonable with you.

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I bet there is some catch. The only thing unsealed will be boring stuff. Oh it turns out a company Bill Clinton owned stock in, back in 1991, did some construction work for a property Epstein owned. It isn't going to be stuff like "here is a video of Justice Thomas raping a kid".

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Most of the names will be innocent people and victims. All of them will be sent death threats and harassed because people will consider them pedophiles. People can't understand two things at once (Epstein was a socialite and a child trafficker) and they don't know what being an associate of Epstein implies. There's good reasons to keep the list private from the masses.

It's funny that those people will be threatened, but people we know have been involved in bribery at the highest levels of our government are not.

It must be funny, otherwise where'd all these tears on my cheeks come from!? 😂

Not sure how true this is given:

Anyone who did not successfully fight to keep their name out of the civil case could see their name become public -- including Epstein's victims, co-conspirators and innocent associates.

I imagine anyone who was innocent and an associate had the money to hire the right lawyers to remove themselves.

I also imagine those who should be on it, also won't be.

I imagine anyone who was innocent and an associate had the money to hire the right lawyers to remove themselves.

Epstein was incredibly well connected, so this statement is dubious at best.

I also imagine those who should be on it, also won’t be.

This is correct. 0% of people "associated" with Epstein have any evidence against them of his crimes, or they'd have been charged as co-conspirators.

And everyone is mystified how groups like the Roman Catholic Church were able to suppress stories of child raise and trafficking for quite literally over a thousand years. Seriously a document was found from before the first crusades talking about it.

The crime doesn't go to criminal trial because the family is bribed and threatened. Then it is in civil matter and the records get sealed. Priest goes and rapes another kid. Rinse lather repeat.

6th amendment of the US Constitution cuts both ways. People have the right to observe what the government is doing in criminal cases. If the US government is refusing to let the public know what is going on during these procedures the possibility of corruption goes from low to almost certain.

The judge stated some names will be redacted as they were victims. I also doubt someone would interact with Epstein several times and not know. He wasn't even trying to hide it.

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To protect the privacy of the rich?

Probably more because it'll tip the ones who actually have cases open on them off.

That's like 90% of what's in still classified docs from controversial moments in domestic investigations, information which could show the hand to people currently under investigation, and also techniques the FBI uses in evidence gathering which aren't known to the wider public and who's exposure could lead to suspects catching wise and closing the avenue.

If you've ever seen one of those get smart posts about how to avoid being identified at a demonstration, Domestic Intelligence is openly trying to avoid more shit being added to those lists of ways to avoid detection. Yes it's absolutely adversarial to the privacy of the public but it's a lot less conspiratorial than a blood libel agenda to cover up the child trafficking of the rich.

So, you mean like Ice T. breaking it down ELI5 for the viewers every week?

You mean like when someone smokes crack cocaine?

Or when they bet too much on the ponies?

Or...

Oh, Johnny. I hope you get better, and soon. Don't start hanging out with that ratfuck Chappelle, either.

Epstein died in 2019. If there's any open cases it's because they're not making any effort to close them.

That's not how major investigations of entire criminal networks work and if you weren't trying to make blood libel cool because class consciousness or whatever you'd know better.

Probably because being on a list of names is not proof of any wrongdoing or crime but will most definitely be interpreted as such by people on the internet.

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