The police chief who oversaw the investigation leading to Jeffrey Epstein’s 2006 arrest told the Miami Herald that state and federal authorities worked against him and the victims.

• As officers tried to bring Epstein to justice for rape and other sex crimes against children, former Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter says, “[t]his case, in many respects, felt like the people who work for our government were working more for Epstein than they were working for the victims and protecting the public.”

Reiter said he informed Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer that the Palm Beach Police Department was building a sexual battery case against a wealthy resident who was raping teenage girls, and Krischer supported the investigation.

• Epstein then hired a powerhouse legal team led by Alan Dershowitz and some of the most aggressive lawyers in America. They launched a scorched-earth attack on the girls and their families. Krischer then pressured Reiter to drop the case.

When Reiter realized state authorities could not be convinced to continue the case, he referred it to the fbi.

• Federal prosecutors took over in 2007, but the lead prosecutor, Marie Villafaña, ran into similar resistance. The Herald reports, “Her supervisors expressed doubts about a successful prosecution, once again noting that the girls had committed prostitution.”
• Villafaña told Reiter she believed that Epstein’s team had “unparalleled access to the decision-makers at the Justice Department” because her bosses began negotiating a secret plea deal with Epstein almost as soon as the FBI took over the case.

Epstein and his lawyers worked with the Department of Justice, which oversees the fbi, to negotiate a deal in which Epstein pleaded guilty to only one count of felony solicitation of prostitution and one count of procurement of a minor for prostitution.

• He was allowed to serve his sentence in a local county jail rather than a state prison. He was also granted a work release in which a private driver picked him up daily from jail and transported him to his high-rise office for much of the day.
• A 2018 Miami Herald investigative series exposed the sham behind this sweetheart deal, prompting President Donald Trump’s Justice Department to revisit the case and eventually charge Epstein with sex trafficking of minors in 2019.

The fact that Epstein remained a wealthy, well-connected businessman for the 13 years between his 2006 arrest and his 2019 arrest is a damning indictment that the legal system indeed protected him.

“Though Epstein is now dead, revelations keep emerging about how many extremely rich, extremely powerful, extremely well-known people continued to associate with him after his 2008 conviction,” Stephen Flurry wrote in “The Problem Is Far Bigger Than Epstein.” “It is a stomach-churning topic to look into, but Americans have to see the spiritual sickness that has beset their nation if they are to stand a chance of turning it around.”

Epstein was able to abuse so many victims for so long only because hundreds of other powerful and connected people in America enabled and protected him. Evil in America is definitely a problem far bigger than Epstein.