Why the Charges in England May Ruin Trump’s Epstein Files Cover-Up
The dramatic arrest Thursday of the former Prince Andrew by eight carloads of British police should scare Donald Trump and many other Jeffrey Epstein associates.
For Trump the problem is that the former royal, who turned 66 on the day of his arrest, doesn’t want to go to prison.
Typically, criminal suspects and criminal defendants can win leniency by offering up bigger fish. And what bigger fish is there than the president of the United States?
To the Trump gang, honor is a meaningless word.
Whether crown prosecutors are willing to trade leniency for—metaphorically—Donald Trump’s head on a pike, is not knowable at this point. But even if they have no interest in Trump a public record will be created in the weeks and months ahead that cannot possibly bolster Trump’s claims of wrongful persecution or reduce his risk of prosecution for child rape, on which there is no statute of limitations in federal law.
Trump asserts he is innocent. Unless and until he is found guilty at trial, or confesses, that is his position under the law. The court of public opinion is another matter, especially for politicians who have bent the knee to Trump and stand to go down if he does.
What we do know is that Andrew and his lawyers will try to save his skin. That will almost certainly include offering up other British citizens who may have further knowledge of Donald Trump’s involvement in the Jeffrey Epstein child rape scandal.
Tough Police Tactic
We also know that usually someone in Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s position is asked to come in to see the police. White collar suspects don’t usually get grabbed unawares, held in a plain jail cell, and give the British equivalent of a Miranda warning, known as being “under caution” that anything they say can and will be used against them in court.
Indeed, you have to go back to 1647 for the last time a British royal arrested. Charles I was beheaded in 1649, a fate Andrew Windsor-Mountbatten need not fear.
Significantly, the arrest Thursday of Andrew wasn’t on child rape or sex trafficking charges, but charges more troublesome for Trump.
At least for now the disgraced former royal is charged only with official misconduct. That creates a bargaining chip on both sides.
Will crown prosecutors threaten to up the ante with rape and related charges, assuming they have enough evidence? Or will they let the former prince avoid that stain on his already deeply stained reputation, but hammer him under British national security and states secrets statutes?
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Charges Explained
The official misconduct charge also means under British law that crown prosecutors can break the confidentiality between the taxpayer-provided security details that went everywhere with Andrew when he was a prince, including when he was a government employee assigned to trade negotiations on behalf of London.
Official security guards In the United Kingdom, just as in the United States, normally are told to ignore protectee misconduct. But now those bodyguards can be brought in to testify under oath. Indeed, they probably already have been interviewed by British law enforcement.
The crown prosecutors also can require the security teams to produce official logs they kept. If those records were fudged to conceal misconduct by Andrew the crown has a lever against the bodyguards, who potentially face criminal charges themselves.
The official misconduct charge against the former prince gives these security guards every incentive to cooperate and even, perhaps, to produce as bargaining chips their personal diaries, photographs, and other evidence about the official misconduct charges.
Woe be on to any of them who participated in any of the sexual assaults of girls.
President Kennedy’s top bodyguard
It’s not unknown for protectees to invite their bodyguards to participate in such things. Think of former President John F. Kennedy who, according to then 19-year-old college student Mimi Alford was slipped into the White House while First Lady Jacqueline was away. Alford’s best-selling book details how she gave oral sex to JFK when then asked her to do the same for in the White House swimming pool for his senior bodyguard.
There’s no crime in that, since she was of age, but it provides a lens to focus on what’s going on across the pond between with the former prince and crown prosecutors.
Americans should also pay close attention to how very differently the Epstein files are being treated by European authorities and by Trump’s administration.
Several European governments have opened investigations into people named in the files.
Norway has charged former Prime Minister Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland with “gross corruption: for his lies about Epstein.
In contrast, the Trump administration brazenly violates the Epstein Files Transparency Act. That law, signed late last year by none other than Donald Trump, requires full disclosure of the Epstein files except for the images and identities of the victims.
Pages Held Back
Instead, half of the more than six million of known pages are being held back. The names of various men, evidently including Trump in some cases, are redacted.
Worse, redactions of some victim’s identifying information were done so sloppily that internet sleuths have identified by name some of the young women who have not gone public. It’s hard to believe those redactions were an accident. As I see it, they were a warning to others: accuse Trump and you will be punished in the court of public opinion.
Pam Bondi, Trump’s personal attack dog defense lawyer who also is attorney general of the United States, smugly sneers at House Democrats who dare question her conduct in hiding files. Asked at a hearing to simply look at Epstein victims in a hearing room last week, she refused.
The roughly three million pages of documents released so far show that federal law enforcement, under the George W Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations utterly failed in their clear and compelling duty to investigate the international sex trafficking operation and rape of girls.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, un-redacted files he has seen mention girls as young as ten and in one case just nine years old.
Moral Depravity
In shocking displays of excusing moral depravity, Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News host, and other Trump loyalists have tried to excuse what went on by suggesting that Epstein had sex, not rape, with girls who were 15, or so still below the age of consent.
It will be revealing whether Kelly and her ilk revise their positions now that we know prepubescent girls were among those sexually assaulted.
Bondi is so determined to protect trump that the Justice Department traced the searches made by those members of Congress who went to use one of the four computers allowing them less fettered access to the half of the Epstein files that have been made public.
Her ability to use the power of the government to cover up will be weakened as the public record in London and other European capitals grows because those governments are investigating, not covering up.
Presumed Innocent
Andrew, like all criminal defendants and suspects—including Trump—is entitled to a presumption of innocence. It is the obligation of prosecutors to persuade a jury or a judge of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt or to get a confession, usually made in return for leniency.
Prince Charles has demonstrated integrity in this, no matter what else you may think of him. The British king is conducting himself with honor.
Unfortunately, we can’t say the same about the president of the United States, his attorney general, and others running his protection and extortion rackets in our name.
That’s because to the Trump gang, honor is a meaningless word.
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