Terror In The White House

Epstein investigations are coming in the back door

Pulling the shutters down and keeping the world out is one of MAGA’s prime beliefs.

In their eyes, the US is large enough and rich enough and powerful enough to exist completely on its own. No other country matters at all — they’re only there to be plundered.

Everyone else knows how fundamentally stupid that is in a connected world. But now reality is coming in like a wrecking ball and it won’t just be the White House East Wing that’s demolished.

Investigations are springing up all over the world into Epstein’s global network of child traffickers. The rich, powerful and connected are being hauled in by the authorities to answer questions about their involvement.

Now a panel of experts convened by the United Nations has concluded that Epstein’s monstrous transgressions may be considered a Crime Against Humanity. This gives a huge impetus to countries everywhere to drive forwards with more investigations into his criminal network.

It’s out of Trump’s hands now.

The feeble incompetents in the US administration have no control over the information that will be released. They can’t contain it. They must sit back impotently while the world brings receipts to the doorstep of the White House.

The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor by UK police on February 19 is only the tip of the iceberg. At time of writing no charges have been brought. It may take weeks for the Crown Prosecution Service to decide on whether to proceed. But regardless, the standing of the former prince has been destroyed by his links with Epstein.

The fact that the law can come for someone many in the UK considered above it is a bugle call to the rest of the world: if a former prince of the realm can be hauled in to answer allegations, no one anywhere should be considered off limits. However wealthy. However powerful or connected.

Thames Valley Police are questioning Andrew on suspicion of misconduct in public office, specifically that while working as a UK trade envoy he supplied confidential information to Epstein. Searches are being carried out at his former home, the vast 30-room Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park, and at his current home in Sandringham, Norfolk.

There has, as yet, been no mention of Andrew’s alleged relationship with the Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, who claimed Andrew trafficked her when she was 17, a charge he has denied. She said, “Prince Andrew believed having sex with me was his birthright.”

The alleged crime happened in the US and if this was the primary investigation it would require the help of American authorities, which may not be forthcoming.

However former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has submitted a five-page letter to several police forces providing new information from the Epstein Files. In his statement Brown said this was additional information to that which he supplied the previous week when he “expressed my concern that we secure justice for trafficked girls and women”.

Writing in The New Statesman, Brown criticised a historical “systematic failure” in Britain to monitor Epstein’s “three-decades-long criminal enterprise.”

The Andrew arrest, however high profile, should not be seen in isolation. It’s part of a web of similar investigations emerging across the world. Each one makes it that much harder for those involved with Epstein to keep hiding in the shadows.

Former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland has been charged with “gross corruption” over his ties with Epstein. Emails in the latest file drop showed Jagland planned solo and family visits to Epstein’s homes in Paris, New York and Palm Beach after the billionaire was convicted of a child sex offence. The charge was brought when the Council of Europe lifted Jagland’s immunity through his past diplomatic role.

Lithuania has begun an investigation into potential human trafficking after the Epstein Files included references to prominent Lithuanians, some of whom received payments from the financier. “An objective and thorough investigation of the circumstances of doubtful legality as well as international legal cooperation is only possible if a pre-trial investigation is launched,” Lithuania’s prosecutor general’s office said in a statement.

The Paris Prosecutor’s Office has opened two lines of inquiry, one into alleged human trafficking and the other into possible financial wrongdoing related to Epstein. And UK police are now assessing Epstein-linked private flights to and from Stansted Airport near London.

These new investigations come on top of the one currently being carried out into former UK Ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson. He’s already lost his ambassadorship and seat in the House of Lords. Like Andrew, the Metropolitan Police investigation is into alleged misconduct in public office.

During the week that Andrew was arrested, a panel of independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council concluded that millions of Epstein files suggested the existence of a “global criminal enterprise” that carried out acts meeting the legal threshold of crimes against humanity.

Those crimes outlined in documents released by the US Justice Department were committed against a backdrop of supremacist beliefs, racism, corruption and extreme misogyny, the panel said.

“So grave is the scale, nature, systematic character, and transnational reach of these atrocities against women and girls, that a number of them may reasonably meet the legal threshold of crimes against humanity,” the experts said in a statement.

The blow for Trump and those in his administration who fought hard to prevent the Epstein Files being released? Those experts said the allegations contained in the files require an independent, thorough and impartial investigation, and said inquiries should also be launched into how it was possible for such crimes to be committed for so long.

The news comes as New Mexico lawmakers opened a new investigation into the 7,600-acre Zorro Ranch outside Santa Fe which was once owned by Epstein. It’s at the centre of allegations that children were murdered there and buried nearby.

Former Albuquerque mayoral candidate Eddy Aragon received an anonymous email in 2019 in which it was alleged that two “foreign girls” were buried in the hills near the ranch on the “orders of Jeffrey and Madam G” — Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. At the time an investigation into the ranch was dropped after federal prosecutors said there was a “parallel investigation” but the ranch was never searched.

The US may be dragging its feet in launching serious investigations into the rich and powerful connected to Epstein, but the rest of the world is taking the lead.

At some point a critical mass will be reached — perhaps when new, damning information surfaces in testimonies. Everyone in the White House knows this. Trump knows it.

Blissful isolationism can’t stop justice calling.