Prince Andrew — rumored to be the queen’s favorite son — has insisted he has no recollection of meeting Giuffre, though there is a , taken in London in 2001, showing him with his arm around her waist. Also in the picture is , currently imprisoned and pending trial in the US for allegedly procuring underage women for the late Jeffrey Epstein. Formerly a powerbroker-financier, Epstein was in a New York City prison cell in August 2019 while awaiting a criminal trial for allegedly trafficking underage girls.

#MeToo: Power, Let’s Talk About It

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Despite Prince Andrew’s denials, the case haunts him: In 2019, he stood down from his official duties after being widely condemned for his seeming indifference to Giuffre and his unconvincing account of his relationship with Epstein in a .

From Palm Beach to Stockholm

On Giuffre’s account, she met Maxwell when she was 16 and working as a spa attendant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. She claims Epstein and Maxwell then abused her sexually and pressured her to have sex with other men, including Prince Andrew. She says she had sex with him on many occasions between 2000 and 2002, at Maxwell’s home in London, Epstein’s New York City residence and on his private Caribbean island.

Of course, the two decades separating the offenses and the legal proceedings have made many wonder why Giuffre waited so long before bringing her case to public attention and, now, to the courts. The rise of #MeToo and the confidence the movement has given many previously constrained women is surely a factor. But to imagine Giuffre as an opportunist, who was never coerced but actually chose to remain under the iniquitous stewardship of Epstein, trivializes the deeper violence she endured. This was violence disguised as care, which Epstein used as his means of possession.

To understand how she, as a teenager, abandoned herself to a world that obliged her to give readily and fulsomely to any number of strangers, we have to try to trespass into her mind. She didn’t surrender herself to sex trafficking — this was her retrospective interpretation. More likely she became part of a glamorous milieu in which she wanted for nothing, at least in material terms. Was she fleeing her family? She has been quite silent about it, but her father, it seems, knew all about her first ventures with Epstein, having worked at the same place as his daughter did when she was approached. Was she attracted to a wonderworld where luxury and extravagance were normal? A combination, most likely.

It’s been suggested that Giuffre found herself in a -like predicament. But this simplifies her experience. There were no captors with whom she learned to identify, only confederates. Today she talks about coercion, but there was no physical threat, as far as we know. Yes, she could have left, but for what? A return to the mundane, and perhaps a family life she found unappealing. Like anyone else, she had options, if you could call it that. Having been caught in a web woven by professional abusers from such a yet-unformed age, did she really see a way out? Our circumstances impose limits on how we’re able to exercise choice.

Giuffre accepted the values and followed the norms of her new culture in a manner somewhat reminiscent of religious cult converts who tiptoe into what strikes them as a strange and unfamiliar environment but adjust and become part of what becomes a new normal. After that, her logic would have changed and any asperse against Epstein and his accomplices lacked plausibility. How could they be such bad people while they were providing lavish gifts and travel by private jet to exotic parts of the world? And how could a woman act so inhumanly against the interest of so many other women? 

Henchwoman?

The role played by British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of Robert Maxwell, is still not completely clear. (Robert Maxwell was a media mogul, who fell to his death from his ÂŁ15-million yacht off the Canary Islands, aged 68, in 1991. There was talk of suicide or murder by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.) The FBI is currently investigating Maxwell, who had an affair with Epstein and worked for him, recruiting staff to work in his mansions and girls to give him massages. Giuffre has said Maxwell procured underage girls for Epstein.

Maxwell has issued a denial, though an affidavit by a woman filed in a separate case in February 2019 claimed she had visited Epstein’s island in 2006 and seen many girls, some “young teenagers,” who had been recruited by Maxwell. Ghislaine Maxwell has denied any wrongdoing and may or may not be a key figure. Until she appears in under oath, we can only surmise. But the optics are not promising.

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Giuffre portrays Maxwell as someone who had Epstein’s unshakable confidence. Maxwell was apparently awestruck by powerful men like Epstein and Prince Andrew. The girls encouraged each other to treat Maxwell worshipfully or risk the consequences. Presumably, they thought she would safeguard the girls; Maxwell was, after all, a woman — and a mature woman — in a conclave dominated by men. She may have been abrasive and unapproachable, but she was still a woman, albeit one who, in the presence of men, “.”

Maxwell’s relationship with the girls must have been complex. We can only imagine that their trust in her was laced with trepidation, and any confidence they had in her would have been tempered by her deference to Epstein. It must have been destabilizing, perhaps devastating, to realize that far from being a protector, Maxwell might have been a henchwoman.

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We can’t tell for sure whether Giuffre was the ingĂ©nue her narrative suggests, but it’s not necessary to assume she either had wisdom beyond her years or the naivetĂ© of a child. Like the other recruits, she probably took a juvenile pleasure from the leverage conferred by her youthful good looks. There is even the possibility that a world of wealthy hedonists was to her liking. It was, as Sarah Ditum reminds us, after all, a time when “” was a commonly accepted trope that elicited no more than a wink from the onlookers; girls caught up in these situations did not yet have the vocabulary to understand themselves to be victims. Equally, there’s no reason to suppose Giuffre was aware of the destructive afterlife of this world.

Alternatively, she may have experienced, in common with a great many women in abusive relationships, the terrifying prospect of nihilism, the absence of solidity and permanence that might await them if they leave. The simplistic “Why didn’t she just go?” often has no answer that makes objective sense. Fight is not an option. Flight seems petrifying. Staying put sometimes appears the best of three bad choices.

Some will say that any person, particularly a woman, who engages in sex for payment is a prostitute. But the term disguises not only the range of relationships and roles in what we now call the commercial sex industry but the gamut of motivations and circumstances contributing to someone’s position in an enterprise (if I can call it that). It’s doubtful that Giuffre ever set out to dispense sexual favors for money, though she probably had no qualms about using them to advance her own interests. She probably never thought she was doing that, anyway.

More likely she just assumed that sex was just part of her duties, which were to supply contentment, repose and a sense of wellbeing to Epstein’s friends. She said of her with Epstein: “He was laying naked on top of a massage table … I’m a 15-year-old girl and seeing him on the table was weird.” But familiarity probably made it less weird, and living in Epstein’s domain probably inclined her toward a docile observance of daily routines so that giving massages to naked men seemed as quotidian as doing grocery shopping. Yet she has survived and appears to be recovering. Her vengeance is probably part of her recovery.

Beyond Reproach?

How this will play out for Prince Andrew and, indeed, for the Windsors, is uncertain. After Prince Harry’s withdrawal and his apparent enthusiasm for sharing family secrets with anyone prepared to listen, a sex scandal is likely not on the royal family’s list of priorities. Andrew’s intransigence and his unwillingness to cooperate with police inquiries invite speculation. Were he an entertainer, such as an actor or a pop singer, this would be manna from heaven. But he isn’t: He is the son of a monarch, a nobleman and, as such, regarded as a person beyond reproach.

The royal family is now properly in crisis. The once-great rulers of a once-great nation struggle defiantly to find anchorage after casting itself adrift of its historical mooring. Even Princess Diana has reappeared like an unwelcome albatross thanks to revelations of Martin Bashir’s untoward behavior in securing her notorious . The family has survived crises before and will survive this one, but not unscathed.

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Andrew now has a dilemma like no other. He must choose between two equally daunting options. He’ll maintain his innocence, of course. But a refusal to appear in court to defend himself may be interpreted as timorousness. In a civil lawsuit, the court has no power to compel attendance, but the prince could still be tried in absentia and face possible damage to his character and, by implication, the crown’s.

A more robust response, on the other hand, could yield the wrong result and perhaps prosecution, in which case the crisis will become a cataclysm for the royal family — and long-awaited justice for countless women like Victoria Roberts Guiffre, who once found themselves trapped in the world of powerful men.

*[Ellis Cashmore is the author of “.”]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔčÏ’s editorial policy.

The post The Prince, the Financier, the Henchwoman and the Girl appeared first on 51łÔčÏ.

The New York Times, in an article by Matthew Goldstein, has the looming financial giant of Frankfurt as the latest actor to emerge in what The Daily Devil’s Dictionary has already referred to as the “Tragedy of Jeffrey Epstein.” As the attentive public is already aware, the eponymous hero of the five-act play met his fate in Act III, in a prison cell in New York last summer. It marked a hyper-dramatic moment of suspense whose ambiguity continues to hover in the audience’s mind. Was it suicide, as the media persist in calling it, or murder?

What Will Ghislaine Maxwell’s Arrest Reveal?

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The final acts of the play that will unfold in the coming months opened with blaring trumpets a week ago when the arrest of Epstein’s female alter ego, Ghislaine Maxwell, was confirmed. In the previous acts, she had made her appearance in the background as the scheming daughter of Robert Maxwell, an emperor (of the press), whose death by water in 1991 shares the same ambiguity in the public record as Epstein’s. No one knows whether Captain Bob’s fall overboard from his yacht was suicide or murder.

Now, as the world eagerly awaits what promises to be the thrillingly dramatic trial scene of the socialite daughter, Deutsche Bank has appeared on the stage as the main character in what amounts to a low-keyed Scene ii of Act IV. The other actor in this scene was New York’s Department of Financial Services, who the villainous bank to surrender $150 million as reparation for “significant compliance failures.”

The Times article sums up Deutsche Bank’s sins: “Instead of performing appropriate due diligence on Mr. Epstein and the activity in his accounts, regulators wrote, the bank was focused on his potential to ‘generate millions of dollars of revenue as well as leads for other lucrative clients.’”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Due diligence:

The effort engaged by financially savvy people to evaluate the chances of a project to make a lot of money with a minimum of risk, including assessing the chances of escaping the consequences of any of the illegal or immoral means required to do so

Contextual Note

The word “diligence” came into English from Latin after migrating through French. The Latin verb, diligo, means “to love, to esteem, to prize.” The idea of diligence originally designated an act of love. In the phrase “due diligence,” it has become transformed into the notion of a duty or a required chore. Nevertheless, in one very real sense, the idea retains its link with Latin. It is about the love of money, which St. Paul — a Roman citizen who wrote in Greek in the first century AD — famously called “the root of all evil” ().

Deutsche Bank was thus honoring its roots when it did its due diligence on Epstein, guided by its love of money. With the expected future testimony of Maxwell, other famous and powerful accomplices — both persons and institutions — will be identified. Deutsche Bank is a major pre-trial catch. Up to now, the focus of the Epstein drama has been primarily on his nauseatingly outrageous pedophilia. Now, the true theme of the drama is beginning to emerge: how money, power, fame as well as sex (and even) can combine to define not just the interconnected preoccupations of some members of our modern elite, but of a lifestyle that most members of the elite appear to consider normal.

Unlike Epstein, Harvey Weinstein or their apparently less criminal but equally flamboyant cohorts — such as Elon Musk, Kanye West, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and, of course, one of the principal roles in the Epstein tragedy, Prince Andrew — Deutsche Bank is a serious institution, which means its actions were focused on the only thing that counts: the flow of money. Because Epstein had plenty of it and was skilled at moving it around, the bank and the abuser made an ideal pair.

Historical Note

Deutsche Bank is a very professional organization that has always obsessively focused on what counts: the lucre it handles. Like any obsession, it has the power to lead a person or even a powerful institution astray. In the bank’s case, this has happened frequently and in multiple ways. For decades — and at an pace — it has had multiple opportunities to express its deeply felt regret for its obsessive “mistakes,” accompanied by the repeated promise to learn from each lesson and never to repeat the same behavior. Given the repetitive pattern, such apologies should be interpreted as the bank’s firm resolution never to repeat the same behavior in precisely the same circumstances. You never know what decisions they might make when the context changes.

In 1998, Deutsche Bank also, decades after the fact, some of its shadier actions in support of the Nazi regime in the 1930s and through World War II. Dealing with Adolf Hitler was normal. But some of the massive amounts of Nazi gold the bank trafficked during the war had its source in the “teeth, wedding bands and personal jewelry” of Holocaust victims. While half a century later the Deutsche Bank’s executives suggested that its governors at the time may not have been aware of the origin of the gold, to restore its reputation it made a public statement that it “fully acknowledges its moral and ethical responsibility for the darkest chapter of its history.”

The regulator’s gives some new insight into Deutsche Bank’s current sense of moral and ethical responsibility: “From the time of Mr. Epstein’s onboarding, the relationship was classified by Deutsche Bank as ‘high-risk’ and therefore subject to enhanced due diligence.” In reality, the report mentions, “no due diligence report was run on Mr. Epstein.”

That doesn’t sound like a mere oversight. After accepting the settlement, The Times reports, the bank “acknowledged that it had erred in taking Mr. Epstein on as a client and that its processes had been weak” before protesting, with an air of solemn sincerity: “Our reputation is our most valuable asset and we deeply regret our association with Epstein.” Who wouldn’t regret being fined $150 million, even if the sum is a paltry punishment for such a powerful bank?

Does the lady protest too much? It doesn’t stop there. Deutsche Bank continued to regret and promised to do better: “We acknowledge our error of onboarding Epstein in 2013 and the weaknesses in our processes. We have learnt from our mistakes and deeply regret our association with Epstein.”

The chief executive himself, Christian Sewing, called the whole thing a “critical mistake and should never have happened.” But the same report describes the “critical mistake” as a persistent one, which makes it resemble corporate policy more than casual neglect.

“Over the years, activities in those accounts were repeatedly questioned by Deutsche Bank employees, who were ignored by their superiors,” The Times reports. Regret can be expressed in a sentence or two. How about taking affirmative action and elevating the employees — who were doing their part in due diligence — to replace the superiors who, worse than doing nothing, apparently blocked it?

That probably won’t happen for a simple reason. The difference between “superiors” and “employees” in the banking industry is that the former — like Jeffrey Epstein himself — fully understand how money functions both as a weapon, to force others into submission, and as a shield, to ensure that one’s crimes will never be made public or, if they are, will be met with lenient punishment. That comes thanks to either a powerful network of accomplices (possibly the entire class of the world’s elite, trained to protect its own) or — as some suspect with regard to Epstein — to blackmail.

This attitude was succinctly by the lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a key member of Epstein’s circle and accused of participating in his preferred activities. Speculating on Ghislaine Maxwell’s coming ordeal he advised, “So everyone should keep an open mind about Maxwell as they should about others who have been accused by Epstein’s alleged victims.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Click here to read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51łÔčÏ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔčÏ’s editorial policy.

The post Deutsche Bank Regrets Its “Association” With Jeffrey Epstein appeared first on 51łÔčÏ.

The audience of a tragedy, especially when the plot is based on familiar historic events, is usually aware beforehand of the basic contours of the plot. The public’s interest focuses instead on the psychology and motives of the characters. In this case, we, the observers of the Epstein drama, are not so much the audience in the playhouse as extras who have been given a role similar to that of the Rome populace in Shakespeare’s play. In that sense, we are both actors on the stage, though with little influence on the plot, and the unwitting victims of the power plays that will likely only begin to make sense at the end of Act V.

The Epstein tragedy may, as some expect, reveal far more extensive damage than the already documented damage done to his direct victims. The man was rotten, but so is the system that maintained and protected him. Mystery shrouds everything that concerns the case. With the media’s attention now fixed on Maxwell, a British socialite and ex-girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, several hidden dimensions of the Epstein affair may emerge that take us beyond the morbid examination of the convicted pedophile’s personal habits and creepy character.

The Timeline of Jeffrey Epstein

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Starting with a cursory review of Maxwell’s mysterious finances, reporters Erica Orden and Kara Scannell at CNN offer an at where this might lead after noting that “federal prosecutors claim to have unearthed a series of unusual financial transactions involving the two that add a new layer to the mysterious financial complexities underpinning the larger Epstein saga.”

In other words, the media — who have been content to treat the story as the tale of one really “bad apple” — will soon have some new speculative theories to pursue and juicy rumors to follow up. This, barring some unforeseen event, should keep the drama going for months on end. The new spotlight on Maxwell may also revive interest in the biggest mystery of 2019: Epstein’s supposed suicide in a US prison cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His act of self-slaughter — facilitated by somnolent guards, defective video equipment and Epstein’s own superhuman strength at breaking multiple bones in his neck while hanging himself (a consequence far more likely in the case of strangulation) — has led some to suspect “murder most foul.”

With such a wealth of plot material, CNN kicks off the first scene of the new act on a subdued tone undoubtedly designed to feed the suspense. The article focuses on Maxwell’s unorthodox financial operations, especially over the past year, as described by the prosecutorial team: “In short, the defendant’s financial resources appear to be substantial, and her numerous accounts and substantial money movements render her total financial picture opaque and indeterminate, even upon a review of bank records available to the Government.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Opaque and indeterminate:

The usual state of the financial accounts of wealthy individuals who, in their skills at hiding the reality of their economic activity, demonstrate their allegiance to a system that encourages, rewards and thrives on both opaqueness and indeterminacy

Contextual Note

CNN’s legal analyst Shan Wu speculated that “the large transfers in the millions between her accounts and Epstein’s accounts” may be evidence of some form of money laundering without suggesting what the source of the money may be or who may have been involved. 

All the indications point to the involvement of powerful and influential people in politics, finance, business, science and intelligence. Such people, even if they felt some personal attachment to Epstein, would not have been either upset about his purported suicide.

Though there remains serious doubt about whether his death actually was suicide, the media continue to assume that’s what it was. The New York Times, for , instead of stating that Epstein was found dead in his cell consistently affirms, as if it was an established fact, that, “Mr. Epstein hanged himself in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan.” 

One website cites 10 facts that might lead a prosecutor to conduct a serious investigation into the possibility of murder. All the facts cited in the article are subject to interpretation, while some appear to fall within the realm of “mere” or unexpected coincidence. What is surprising is that there has been no pressure from the corporate media even to acknowledge the level of doubt that surrounds the case. That may change now that, thanks to Maxwell’s arrest, the spotlight is once again on Epstein’s network. It would change even more radically if anything were to happen to Maxwell during detention, unless that too could be easily written off as another unfortunate suicide.

Historical Note

There is a significant 11th point, unmentioned in the above cited list of 10 facts. It dates back to Jeffrey Epstein’s original trial in 2007 and the extraordinarily lenient sentence he received. The first clue about how that travesty of incarceration could have occurred appeared a decade later, as the newly elected Donald Trump was forming his cabinet. Alexander Acosta, Trump’s choice for labor secretary, was the US attorney assigned to the Epstein case back in 2007. Acosta cut the plea deal with the prosecution that reduced Epstein’s punishment to the mildest possible slap on the wrist. The judgment has been universally condemned as unprecedented, unjustified and downright incomprehensible. 

It was also illegal, since the decision was reached and applied without consulting or informing the plaintiffs — Epstein’s numerous victims. When the Trump transition team signaled this possibly embarrassing episode, Acosta explained: “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.” Acosta did leave it alone, as did most of the media, with the exception of , an intrepid reporter at the Miami Herald who patiently sought out the testimony of Epstein’s victims

Another journalist, Vicky Ward, spent years investigating Epstein for Vanity Fair. Writing for The Daily Beast following Epstein’s arrest in 2019, she her astonishment that the Trump team thought that the explanation citing Epstein’s link to intelligence “was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta.” They didn’t appear to wonder, as others have done since, “which intelligence?”

There have been many reports that Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, the disgraced publisher Robert Maxwell who died mysteriously after falling off his own yacht in 1991, worked with or had a strong relationship with Israeli intelligence. Some have speculated that his favorite daughter maintained the connection.

Even the mainstream media has mentioned in passing what is usually dismissed as a perverse obsession of Epstein: filming with hidden cameras the sexual antics taking place in his various abodes. Some have wondered whether the “obsession” didn’t have something to do with blackmail. 

Lacking concrete proof of a link with American or Israeli intelligence, the media are right not to jump to any conclusions, if only out of fear of being accused of publicizing conspiracy theories and losing their own access to such valuable sources. It is admittedly difficult and risky to investigate the clandestine operations of intelligence agencies, but shouldn’t the media have demonstrated at least a modicum of interest in Acosta’s statement?

Ghislaine Maxwell’s arrest and future trial — if it happens — might stimulate a new curiosity on the part of the media or simply demonstrate their own links with intelligence. The New York Times, The Washington Post and others cannot afford to consistently appear to the public as the playthings of powerful people and institutions who give them instructions about what not to investigate. 

The “respectable” media may themselves be hoping for another convenient suicide to spare them the effort and expense of unveiling what has so carefully remained “opaque and indeterminate.” 

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Click here to read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51łÔčÏ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔčÏ’s editorial policy.

The post What Will Ghislaine Maxwell’s Arrest Reveal? appeared first on 51łÔčÏ.