by Paul Dragu, The New American:
The police chief who oversaw Jeffrey Epstein’s Florida case recently told the Miami Herald that state and federal governments worked against him. Moreover, he said he was intimidated and threatened over his persistence to bring Epstein to justice.
“This 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,” Michael Reiter told the Herald.
The Florida newspaper published an article on Saturday detailing the immense pressure and obstacles Reiter and his force ran into while trying to bring Epstein to justice. Reiter was the Palm Beach police chief from 2001 to 2009.
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In the article, Reiter documents a number of odd things that made this investigation different from all others. “We had a lot of physical evidence,” he said. “One of the things that was so unusual about this case is we had prosecutors who had excellent reputations, yet this case they found reasons not to prosecute.”
State Attorney
Among the many who got in Reiter’s way was Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer. When he first told Krischer that his police department was putting together a sexual battery case against a rich resident who was raping girls, Reiter said Krischer was supportive. But then “Epstein hired a powerhouse legal team, headed by some of the most aggressive lawyers in America.” Among them was Alan Dershowitz, who launched a “a scorched-earth attack on the girls and their families.” Dershowitz claimed the girls were “gold diggers who lied about their ages and had been paid money by Epstein.” Dershowitz and his team also painted the girls as prostitutes. All this changed Krischer’s posture. He ended up believing they couldn’t win the case and pressured Reiter to wrap it up and move on.
But Reiter and his lead investigator didn’t listen. They kept drafting arrest awards and probable-cause affidavits. However, Krischer “refused to sign off on them.” Instead, he told Reiter that he “wanted to close the case by writing Epstein up on a misdemeanor.”
Grand Jury
Reiter remain undeterred, so Krischer “decided to hand the decision over to a state grand jury to let them decide whether to indict Epstein on more serious criminal charges.” But even there, chicanery reared its ugly head, as Krischer’s lead assistant state attorney “failed to present evidence showing Epstein had been sex trafficking dozens of underage girls.”
Krischer and his assistant never explained why they didn’t present Epstein’s case as a sex-trafficking case. A former Palm Beach prosecutor named Jack Scarola told the Herald that Krischer’s behavior “didn’t make any sense then — and still doesn’t.” Scarola said, “It’s impossible for me to believe that he did not recognize that Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes were extremely serious and that the quality of the evidence against him was very strong.”
Reiter said that “a prominent member of Palm Beach society who was also chairman of the police pension board” also told him to stop investigating Epstein. His name was C. “Gerry” Goldsmith.
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