He’ll find a way to squirm into nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
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“Money will get you through times of no connections better than connections will get you through times of no money.”
–anon.
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Look, the guy is a creep and a criminal, but I’m not sure why the prosecutors who know he faked the passport don’t think he could fake some stamps.
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It would be kind of entertaining to see Epstein’s lawyers try to use forgery of legal documents as a defense.
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I suspect some nefarious offender could doctor a Junior Ranger National Parks Passport that would pass TSA inspection. Maybe no other nation would fall for it, but TSA ain’t paid much and bribes aren’t allowed, so even a stapled Xerox should work.
Was Epstein ever a Junior Ranger? There you have it!
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Yes, and weirdly, the picture of Epstein had mouths in the place of eyes.
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Hi, I’m Jeffrey Epstein. No wait. No I’m not. I’m Mohammed Bin Salman. Oh this little girl traveling with me? She’s my sister’s cousin’s niece’s best friend. Say hi to the nice man in the uniform, Jessica.
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Yeah, though I imagine there’s already a honking big list of things that speak to that…
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It’s reported, but not that prominently - it is, after all, happening on another continent, and Austria has their share of internal scandals.
Acosta and Trump are mentioned, but as far as I can tell nothing on the fake1) Austrian passport.
1) At this point I wouldn’t rule out that it’s technically a “real” passport, but obtained by illegal means.
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I google translated it, so I don’t know if this is a translation issue, but that article appears to use the term “trafficked in underage women” a bunch when talking about epstein.
Such brave “journalistic neutrality”. Women who happen to be underage. Of course not children.
I don’t understand all this soft pillow hands reporting on a child rapist. The american news media is just as bad. Underage women are children. If you have sex with an underage woman, you are a child rapist.
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I think, but I am not certain, that before completing 14 years of life a child is under age and between 14 and under the age of 18 is a minor. However there is no clear definition for terms like child, minor, youth and adolescent.
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It seems to be a translation issue. The article uses the adjective “Minderjährige” as a noun, so Google choose “women” based upon the gender of the adjective.
EDIT: @timd is correct, a better translation would have been “minors”.
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Beginning to think this Epstein person is not on the up and up.
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And those would add verisimilitude to it being used as he described. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a little cottage industry selling doctored passports to the wealthy with just this sort of excuse. The question is whether there are entry/exit records that match the stamps on the passport. I’d guess that they are being suppeoned or requested from the governments in question. But certainly posession of a fake passport definitely makes him more of a flight risk which is why it was brought up in the first place.
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I confess that I don’t know much about how the US treats other countries’ ingress and egress stamps, but I don’t imagine they have much legal effect in the US other than potentially as evidence of being somewhere else at a certain time. The DHS reentry stamps might have some more legal significance.
Anyway, once you have an indisputably forged passport, I can’t imagine sticking at saying the whole thing is made up. [shrug]
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I had forgotten about that. I was just idly pondering his lawyers statement. I suppose it’s a reasonable excuse (if not legal), but I think the courts and law enforcement will see the reality that it’s an obvious escape protocol for someone trying to flee justice. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has another fake passport, plus some cash and diamonds stashed somewhere they haven’t found yet.
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Underage Women aren’t children in neither Germany nor Austria. Age of consent generally starts at 14, the age you stop being a child and become a teenager. Same with religious maturity, by the way. Though there are various provisions to make exploitation of a 14 year old by an adult, especially a much older adult, a punishable offense.
The idea that a 16 year old is the same and should be treated the same as a child is a bizarre idea from our point of view, the whole process of raising offspring is understand to be a continuous transfer of responsibilities until full independence is reached at age 18. So the reporting will noticeably differ from that of the US, where society thinks it should be legal to hit children and teenagers, but not let them have a beer until they are 21.
Regarding the Epstein case: It does makes the news, but only a little bit. We have our own child rape scandal right now – and press calls it that way – where local institutions should’ve take noticed decades ago. Anyway, I found Epstein articles in various respectable sources which use the expected termin Minderjährige (minors), Kronen Zeitung is just the usual Yellow Press Dreck and this particular article – unless Austrians started to write very different from Germans – reads a lot like it was ripped from English sources and shoddily translated.
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Are we talking about the Kronen Article?
“Epstein soll minderjährige Frauen missbraucht haben”
“…aus oftmals minderjährigen Frauen aufgebaut haben”
That’s literally “underage women” , not “minors”. At one point they use the term “junge Mädchen”, “young girls”.
“Women” stresses maturity, though. Implies 16 years or older.
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The article posted was Der Standard:
Jeffrey Epstein wird vorgeworfen, dutzende Minderjährige sexuell missbraucht zu haben, zudem soll er Minderjährige zur Prostitution angestiftet haben.
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Hey, we have a gradual transfer of responsibilities, as well! We put them behind the wheel of a car at 16, and we give them machine guns and send them to Afghanistan at 18. If they survive the beatings and the roads and the war zones, I think they deserve a beer, don’t you?
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