1/23/2015
Who is Jeffrey Epstein? Click here for our primer about the billionaire pedophile.
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Bill Clinton took repeated trips on the "Lolita Express"—the private passenger jet owned by billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein—with an actress in softcore porn movies whose name appears in Epstein's address book under an entry for "massages," according to flight logbooks obtained by Gawker and published today for the first time. The logs also show that Clinton shared more than a dozen flights with a woman who federal prosecutors believe procured underage girls to sexually service Epstein and his friends and acted as a "potential co-conspirator" in his crimes.
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 in Florida to one count of soliciting underage girls for sex (and one count of adult solicitation), for which he served just over a year in county jail. But sprawling local, state, and federal investigations into the eccentric investor's habit of paying teen girls for "massages"—sessions during which he would allegedly penetrate girls with sex toys, demand to be masturbated, and have intercourse—turned up a massive network of victims, including 35 female minors whom federal prosecutors believed he'd sexually abused. He has reportedly settled lawsuits from more than 30 "Jane Doe" victims since 2008; the youngest alleged victim was 12 years old at the time of her abuse.
Who is Jeffrey Epstein? Click here for our primer about the billionaire pedophile.
Epstein's predatory past, and his now-inconvenient relationships with a Who's Who of the Davos set, hit the front pages again earlier this month when one of his victims, Virginia Roberts, claimed in a federal court filing that Epstein recruited her as a "sex slave" at the age of 15 and "sexually trafficked [her] to politically-connected and financially-powerful people," including Prince Andrew and attorney Alan Dershowitz. (The latter, the filing claimed, had sex with the victim "on private planes"; Dershowitz vigorously denies the charges, as does Prince Andrew.)
Two female associates of Epstein—the socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein's former assistant Sarah Kellen—have been repeatedly accused in court filings of acting as pimps for him, recruiting and grooming young girls into their network of child sex workers, and frequently participating in sex acts with them. Kellen in particular was believed by detectives in the Palm Beach Police Department, which was the first to start unraveling the operation, to be so deeply involved in the enterprise that they prepared a warrant for her arrest as an accessory to molestation and sex with minors. In the end, she was never arrested or charged, and federal prosecutors granted her immunity in a 2007 non-prosecution agreement that described her as a "potential co-conspirator" in sex trafficking.
Maxwell, the daughter of the late media mogul Robert Maxwell, has been accused by Roberts of photographing Epstein's victims "in sexually explicit poses and [keeping] the child pornography on her computer," and "engag[ing] in lesbian sex with the underage females she procured for Epstein." She has denied the allegations in the past.
Clinton shared Epstein's plane with Kellen and Maxwell on at least 11 flights in 2002 and 2003—before any of the allegations against them became public—according to the pilots' logbooks, which have surfaced in civil litigation surrounding Epstein's crimes. In January 2002, for instance, Clinton, his aide Doug Band, and Clinton's Secret Service detail are listed on a flight from Japan to Hong Kong with Epstein, Maxwell, Kellen, and two women described only as "Janice" and "Jessica." One month later, records show, Clinton hopped a ride from Miami to Westchester on a flight that also included Epstein, Maxwell, Kellen, and a woman described only as "one female."
In 2002, as New York has reported, Clinton recruited Epstein to make his plane available for a week-long anti-poverty and anti-AIDS tour of Africa with Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker, billionaire creep Ron Burkle, Clinton confidant Gayle Smith (who now serves on Barack Obama's National Security Council), and others. The logs from that trip show that Maxwell, Kellen, and a woman named Chauntae Davis joined the entourage for five days.
That last name—Chauntae Davies—shows up elsewhere in papers unearthed by the various investigations into Epstein's sex ring: his little black book. Davies is one of 27 women listed in the book under an entry for "Massage- California," one of six lists of massage girls Epstein kept in various locales, with a total of 160 names around the globe, many of them underage victims.
Today, Davies is an actress with credits including HBO's Enlightened. In 2002, she was 23. According to her IMDB profile, in addition to her apparent massage work for Epstein, she landed a role that year as a "lingerie model" inExposed, a movie produced by a softcore porn company called MRG Entertainment. (Other MRG films include Deviant Desires and Carnal Confessions; the company has since been purchased by Larry Flynt.Exposed, appropriately enough, was directed by a pseudonymous auteur who went by the name of Clinton J. Williams.) Davies's role in Clinton's flying AIDS-prevention circus isn't clear, and though her LinkedIn page claims a certificate in Swedish massage, there is no evidence that she ever actually treated Epstein to one. Reached via e-mail, she said only, "Ireally am not interested in being slandered in the media for having known this person a time ago. Some of the things being said are not things I have information on."
Clinton's office did not respond to an inquiry. Kellen and Maxwell did not return messages.
Other prominent figures whose names appear in the logs, which document globe-spanning flights on Epstein's planes during various periods from 1997 to 2005, include Dershowitz, former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president Larry Summers, Naomi Campbell, and scientist Stephen Pinker.
The logs also cast doubt on public statements made by Dershowitz, who has been vigorously downplaying his relationship with Epstein since Roberts levied her accusations against him. Dershowitz has attempted to paint himself as a mere passing acquaintance of Epstein, suggesting to the American Lawyer last week that he only began hanging around the billionaire to fundraise for his school, Harvard.
Q. From what I've read, your relationship with Epstein seemed chummy. You socialized with him and you and your family stayed at his various homes. Isn't it a bad idea for a lawyer to be so close to a notorious client?A. Let me tell you how I met him. I was introduced to him by Lady de Rothschild as an academic colleague. He was friendly with Larry Summers… He was in the process of contributing $50 million to Harvard for evolutionary biology.
Epstein did indeed pledge a substantial donation to Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, though it was $30 million, not $50 million. The first installment of $6.5 million was announced in 2003. And Epstein was indeed friendly with Summers, who assumed the mantle of president at Harvard in July 2001. The clear implication of Dershowitz's answer is that he didn't start hanging out with Epstein until it was in his interest to, because Epstein was the boss' friend and was donating money to his university.
What's more, Dershowitz told the American Lawyer, he is loyal to his wife, who is always by his side: "I've been married to the same woman for 28 years. She goes with me everywhere. People know that I won't argue a case or give a speech unless my wife travels with me. This is not the profile of someone who screws around."
But according to the flight logs, Dershowitz was close enough to Epstein to have accompanied him on a flight from Palm Beach to New Jersey's Teterboro Airport as early as December 1997. On that flight, the pair was accompanied by a number of people, including one unidentified "female," a "Hazel," a "Claire," and Maxwell.
The logs also show Dershowitz on a flight with Epstein from Bedminster Bedford, Mass., to Teterboro in October 1998, and a flight from Teterboro to Martha's Vineyard in 1999. And a 2005 trip from Massachusetts to Montreal shows him traveling with Epstein, "Tatianna," and others.
One things the logs don't show: Dershowitz's wife traveling with him.
In an interview with Gawker, Dershowitz repeated his emphatic denials of ever having sexual contact with any underaged girls, and acknowledged that he first met Epstein way back in 1997. "It was just before [ Epstein confidant] Les Wexner's 60th birthday," Dershowitz said. "My first substantive contact with him was to fly with him to Les Wexner's house to attend dinner with Shimon Peres and John Glenn."
As for who else was on those flights, Dershowitz couldn't recall. Hazel? "I don't know." Claire? "I have no idea." Tatianna? "I think that was a woman in her 20s who was Epstein's girlfriend, but I never flew with her." The unidentified female? "That could have been my mother."
As for why his ever-present wife didn't appear in the flight logs by his side, Dershowitz said that she did accompany him on several Epstein-sponsored trips that don't show up in the logs obtained by Gawker. (It is also possible that the logs, which pilots generally keep primarily to record hours of flight time, could also be incomplete or inaccurate as to the passengers.) "She travels with me all over. On occasion, she's working or travels separately. I travel with her almost all the time, not all the time."
One thing is for sure, though: "I have a very clear, unequivocal recollection that I was never on a plane with any young women, period."
In the same American Lawyer interview, Dershowitz claimed that his relationship with Epstein was "entirely professional," and that allegations that the two were "chummy" were "a total bum rap."
Contrast that with his testimonials to Vanity Fair in a 2003, pre-pedophilia profile of Epstein:
• "Alan Dershowitz says that, as he was getting to know Epstein, his wife asked him if he would still be close to him if Epstein suddenly filed for bankruptcy. Dershowitz says he replied, 'Absolutely. I would be as interested in him as a friend if we had hamburgers on the boardwalk in Coney Island and talked about his ideas.'"
• Dershowitz also said of Epstein: "I'm on my 20th book. . . . The only person outside my immediate family that I send drafts to is Jeffrey."
Asked how those comments tracked with his more recent portrayal of his relationship with Epstein, Dershowitz said simply: "He was a friend with whom I talked about ideas. We never discussed women or his social life."
If Dershowitz was a good friend to Epstein, he was a better lawyer. Along with a dream team of attorneys that included Gerald Lefcourt, Roy Black, and Ken Starr, he was successful in getting federal investigators not to charge Epstein with moving his victims across state lines and other associated crimes. The federal non-prosecution agreement Epstein's legal team negotiated with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida immunized all named and unnamed "potential co-conspirators" in Epstein's child trafficking network, which includes those who allegedly procured minors for Epstein and also any powerbrokers who may have molested them. Although Dershowitz wasn't a signatory to the plea agreement, the latest filings in Roberts's case against Epstein accuse Dershowitz of essentially negotiating his own immunity:
Dershowitz would later play a significant role in negotiating the NPA on Epstein's behalf. Indeed, Dershowitz helped negotiate an agreement that provided immunity from federal prosecution in the Southern District of Florida not only to Epstein, but also to "any potential co-conspirators of Epstein". . . . Thus, Dershowitz helped negotiate an agreement with a provision that provided protection for himself against criminal prosecution in Florida for sexually abusing Jane Doe #3.
Dershowitz says the self-immunity accusation is preposterous, and that while he negotiated its broad outlines, he never read the agreement and wasn't involved in drafting the language. Besides, he says, "If I had had sex with Virginia Roberts, which I didn't, I wouldn't be a co-conspirator, I'd be a perpetrator," and thus not immune under the agreement, he told Gawker. "I did not know this woman, I did not touch this woman, and the entire story is made up out of whole cloth."
Dershowitz has pledged to seek disbarment of Roberts's attorneys, which include the respected former federal judge Paul Cassell, telling the American Lawyer: "Either [Cassell] will be disbarred or I will be. And if I knowingly had sex with a sex slave then I would deserve disbarment."
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Nick Bryant is the author of The Franklin Scandal, the true story of a nationwide pedophile ring that pandered children to a cabal of the rich and powerful, and the co-author of Confessions of a D.C. Madam: The Politics of Sex, Lies, and Blackmail, which will be published in March. Additional reporting by J.K. Trotter and Natasha Vargas-Cooper. If you have information to share about Epstein's activities, please email tips@gawker.com.
Top image by Jim Cooke.
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