On the run since before Epstein was arrested.
Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who was accused by many women of helping procure underage sex partners for Jeffrey Epstein, was arrested in New Hampshire, the FBI said Thursday.
Maxwell, who lived for years with Epstein, was taken into custody around 8:30 a.m., said FBI spokesman Marty Feely.
Epstein killed himself in a federal detention center in New York last summer while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Maxwell was accused by many women of recruiting them to give Epstein massages, during which they were pressured into sex. Those accusations, until now, never resulted in criminal charges. The exact nature of the charges against her weren’t immediately revealed.
Full Netflix Documentary about Jeffrey and Ghislaine
My speculative question:
Would this arrest have even happened, had AG Barr gotten his way and installed his hand-picked man to oversee The Southern District of New York, less than two weeks ago?
Could Barr have gotten word that they were closing in on Ms. Maxwell?
Was Donald Trump ever a patron of Mr. Epstein’s “services?”
I asked similar questions in a past diary, a few short weeks ago:
Remember, US Attorney William Barr went to EXTRAORDINARY lengths to have his way, as far as Geoff Berman leaving his position, and giving it to Donald Trump’s golf-buddy.
He lied multiple times, in writing, sidestepped protocol, in writing, in front of the American public.
- He first offered Berman various other (higher) positions — BRIBE
- He then falsely claimed Berman had submitted his resignation
- He then falsely claimed Donald Trump had authorized the firing
- He tried to skirt the law by inserting someone into the position, which didn’t follow protocol
An article at The Atlantic
There are a range of plausible explanations. Some are worse than others, though none represents what one would like to see from the Department of Justice.
The most benign explanation—though not exactly a comforting one—is simple patronage. According to Barr’s original statement, Trump had decided to appoint Jay Clayton—currently the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission—to the job. Clayton, according to The New York Times, had recently golfed with the president at Trump’s club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and had expressed interest in the U.S. attorney job. So one possibility is that Berman’s removal was merely an effort to clear the path for a person friendly with the president to get a job he wanted. In support of this possibility is Barr’s claim in his letter to Berman that he offered Berman other possible senior jobs—jobs that would arguably be promotions, such as running the SEC or the Justice Department’s Civil Division.
[...]
Those last two efforts failed—and it appears that Trump’s latest gambit has as well. The office is, for the time being, in the hands not of a political crony of the president or a handpicked Barr protégé, but of Berman’s own chief deputy, Audrey Strauss, whom The New York Times dryly describes as “unlikely to be influenced by political motives.” The office’s leadership will probably not change anytime soon, since there is little prospect of getting a new nominee confirmed in a timely fashion, the election is coming up, and Democrats in the Senate would have a careful eye on the entire situation. So if the goal was to thwart some specific investigation, that seems unlikely to succeed.
One other reason for the firing might have been to clumsily put the kabash on the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Which had only gained focus after Epstein’s “suicide.” And much exposure, after the Netflix documentary.
What makes me speculate thus?
The timing.
“The timing is the thing, wherein I'll catch the approval of the ‘king’ "
- Bill Shakespeare (as butchered by Bill Barr)
Folks, only 12 days ago, the firing happened.
As far as I can tell, there has been no other SDNY case which has taken drastic action since then.
Except for the arrest of Maxwell.
It is tempting to assume that Trump and Barr acted with urgency because Berman must have been about to do something politically dangerous to the president, that some investigation must have been coming to fruition. And that may be right; this far into the Trump administration, far be it from us to foreclose the possibility that something unexpected is lurking beyond the horizon.
Why the urgency, Bill?
- To have to fire the existing person in any position Berman may have accepted?
- To start a likely contentious nomination fight in the Senate, four months before an election??
- To shift the running of the SDNY to another US Attorney head, who has his own office to run???
- To spend SO MUCH political capital, trying to install one particular man, who’s law experience specialized in mergers and acquisitions transactions and capital markets offerings????
- To do it, apparently, to stop the arrest of Epstein’s partner in crime.