Sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell found guilty

The circumstances allowing his death weren’t actually that uncommon. It’s just that the media doesn’t spend much time covering the profound incompetence and neglect in American prisons unless something happens to a famous person in prison.

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Fixed that for ya.

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Seems as of late that people who would normally escape justice by virtue of their societal position are actually being convicted of their crimes

Refreshing.

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I mean if we’re gonna be sticklers on that end.

Epstein channeling money around isn’t even specifically alleged. It’s commonly assumed, and I would eat my hat if there wasn’t something sketchy going on there.

But the guy was conformably a trader, did conformably work at Bear Stearns, has run and worked for businesses in the financial sector, did use the job title financial manager, and was licensed to do that.

“Financier” is a little grandiose. Especially given that he seems to have mostly been some sort of Investor Class debt collector for most of his career. But “Financial Manager” and “Financial Consultant” which I see about as often as “Financier” do kinda cut closest to what’s actually confirmable.

There’s a problem of what the hell do you actually call his profession. Since he doesn’t appear to have actually had one.

I think the actual issue is people need to stop leading with that. It’s the same deal with the “socialite” thing for Maxwell. Salacious attempt to tie it to glitzy bankers and fancy peoples. As if what is primarily important here is that these people were rich.

Or the assumption that people are primarily familiar with Epstein for his financial work. Most people didn’t, and wouldn’t know who this was if it wasn’t for all the horrible shit they did.

Sadly. That particular facility is such a well known hellhole of human rights violations there’s been a long string of attempts to shut it down.

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… who happens to be disturbingly connected to a bunch of other famous White males.

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The entitlement of “the money” –– she’ll never rat out her conspirators, because deep down she believes that she and her money friends are entitled to do whatever the fuck they want.

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I’ll bet she’s willing to wait out the next general election, hoping for a GOP prez to pardon her.

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you could be sure that trump would do it without a hint of shame

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A lot earlier in his life, yeah. But his actual current “profession” seemed to be “take money from rich people for reasons unknown.” Apparently there’s something of a lack of evidence he was taking money and doing anything with it to provide a return on those investments for his clients, and that people were giving him money because that was something he was good at (and not just an excuse to give him money for… other reasons).

It is for the media, it seems. Even pretending to be rich seems to be enough for the press to give people a free pass (e.g. Trump).

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If he were just a common person who trafficked people the same way, and trust me, there are plenty of such people in prison, and they committed suicide, it wouldn’t merit even the first section of most national newspapers.

He was a suicidal man, who had tried previously, said repeatedly he was going to do it, got his lawyer to argue him off the suicide watch list, and promptly committed suicide at the first opportunity. Meanwhile, Maxwell, the one who kept all the records, organized all the things, and procured all the girls… was left perfectly alive in her multiple months on the run (when everyone knew where she was because she purchased a house in cash using a company she was the sole proprietor of and ventured into town multiple times a week.)

If he weren’t Jeffrey Epstein, this would just be another sign of failure of the prison system in letting a suicidal prisoner end their life, and the incompetency of all of that.

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Thing is there’s a lack of evidence that he wasn’t doing that too. It’s kind of a black box.

No one has specifically accused him of impropriety, whether theft or the oft speculated black mail. I don’t think anyone’s even specified what he was doing for them.

He seems to have done the collections thing for a lot longer, and it rolled right into his more recent company.

But that company was a registered and licensed Financial Management company as far as I know. And that’s something you can peg down, and base a headline off of.

The other big gap is it does not seem that his money actually came from any of that. There’s all the weird around Leslie Wexner sure.

But it does turn out that Epstein did have serious wealth, and it just looks like it all came from fairly boring investment activity.

In the recent lawsuits several people have testified that Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine’s father, essentially staked him. Straight up gave him shit tons of money to dump into the market and set him up with connections and what were basically no-show jobs.

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Omertà died decades ago. Give her time to look at life in prison and she’ll sing.

No chef? No parties? No summer home? No hun . There’s the yard and vintage pruno.

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I’m not so sure of that. She seems to have been all about maintaining the lifestyle, and that’s gone forever now. She probably would have flipped in Epstein in a minute if it would have saved her skin. Once he was gone there was no one left to flip on who was guiltier than she was.

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Some typos are better than the correct word.

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That one I’m not so sure on. She seems to have been down right pathological in her obsession with and deferral to Epstein. I’m probably misremembering it, but there was line in an interview with some she grew up with. Along the lines of “normal people have hobbies and interests. Ghislaine had Jeffery”.

If he was still alive I don’t think there’s anyway she’d ever talk.

If something keeps her from doing it now, it’d probably be some warped idea about saving his reputation.

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See, now I have to correct it :frowning:

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When he was the one facilitating her “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous” existence, sure. If he was going to be the one thing that prevented her from eating at a fancy restaurant (or really anywhere outside a prison cafeteria) again? Much less likely.

Her defense largely rested on the claim that she had been estranged from him for years, even a victim of sorts herself. She couldn’t admit explicit knowledge of his crimes without implicating herself but short of that she was certainly willing to throw his reputation under the bus in her own defense.

Flipping on him now doesn’t get her anything though. The DoJ isn’t going to cut time off a sex trafficker’s sentence just because she spills the beans on someone who is already dead.

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Et tu Matt G?

Et tu?

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Maxwell actually comes from serious, hereditary wealth. Her father was even a British MP.

Now their whole family business imploded around serious financial fraud. But doesn’t seem to have impacted her person wealth at all, she stayed entirely lifestyles of the rich and famous. Was even the one who introduced Epstein to Prince Andrew, and a lot of their other famous associates.

It seems to be much more of a feedback loop going on there. But Maxwell was definitely the access point to prominent people and flashy social scenes for Epstein.

The whole fucking story is significantly weirder than the plain news coverage of the case tends to get into.

Part of what I’m getting at is this not really a rational person. That was pretty late turn from what I recall.

I don’t doubt that she’ll flip. It just also wouldn’t surprise me all that much if she went on some bonkers denial kick once she’s totally backed into a corner. There’s a whole bunch a Q-stuff she could just latch right onto.

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Well, the time to rat was before she was found guilty because she has lost a great deal of her leverage. Might she strike a deal before sentencing? Perhaps, but it won’t get her off, maybe a lighter sentence.

I don’t see it happening. She believes that she and her kind own this world, and can trifle with others lives to their pleasure –– she’ll wait to see trump release her.

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