Jeffrey Epstein records expected to shed light on years of abuse could be released: report

A Court of Appeals decision has cleared the way for a judge to consider if grand jury transcripts leading to indictment of Jeffrey Epstein should be made public, The Palm Beach Post reported.

Epstein received just a single charge of soliciting a prostitute in 2006 — a decision that allowed him to continue to abuse and traffic girls for 13 more years. Attorneys for The Palm Beach Post have argued for access to the records, saying that learning how the grand jury reached its decision will shed light on the role prosecutors had in allowing Epstein to escape accountability.

“A Palm Beach Post investigation found that out of multiple teenage girls who told police that they were recruited and paid to come to Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion where he sexually abused them, then-State Attorney Barry Krischer’s office called only one to testify before the grand jury, and undermined her testimony, displaying social media posts about boys and drinking,” the Post’s report stated.

Clerk of Courts & Comptroller Joseph Abruzzo’s office could have fought against the release of the records, but announced on Wednesday that the office “will not appeal this ruling and looks forward to further direction from the court,” adding that Abruzzo would “leave no stone unturned” and wanted “these records released for full transparency to the public.”

Read the full report over at The Palm Beach Post.

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Trump’s blunders ‘raise the risk of global conflict’ as enemies ‘gang up’: analyst



After a series of diplomatic blunders, President Donald Trump and America's reputation loss could "raise the risk of global conflict" and come at a major cost, including "mischief or worse" from enemies.

In an opinion piece published Monday, Bloomberg columnist Andreas Kluth describes how a good reputation can be difficult to obtain or maintain, and Trump "has squandered whatever credibility America had left in foreign and security policy."

Following his rambling speech last week in front of the United Nations and his struggle to see the difference between "personal chemistry" with President Vladimir Putin and diplomatic action, Trump has effectively put both adversaries and allies on edge, wrote Kluth.

"Inklings of danger are everywhere," Kluth writes. "America’s partners are becoming more anxious and making alternative arrangements for their security: Saudi Arabia just signed a defensive pact with Pakistan after watching an Israeli strike against its Gulf neighbor Qatar, which is allied to, but got no help from, the United States. America’s adversaries keep testing the resolve of Trump and the West, as Putin is doing in eastern Europe. Or, like Xi Jinping in Beijing and Kim in Pyongyang, they’re recalculating bellicose scenarios in secret. Other countries, like India, are wary of committing to America and keeping all options open, even clutching hands with Moscow and Beijing."

And although Trump is not the first president to struggle with navigating U.S. reputation among foreign nations, it puts America at an unfortunate future disadvantage.

"Against this backdrop, anybody watching US policy for the past decade, from friendly Europe to adversarial China, already had reason to doubt US credibility. What Trump has done in his second term is to remove the doubts and confirm the loss. Allies now know they can’t trust America, while adversaries are ganging up and recalculating their plans for mischief or worse.

It's unclear what will happen in the future; a damaged reputation jeopardizes diplomacy.

"These responses to America’s loss of credibility will raise the risk of global conflict," Kluth writes. "The danger will go up even more if the US, under this or a future president, panics and decides to overcompensate in reestablishing its reputation, with a demonstratively hawkish turn that could tip into war. If America and the whole world are becoming less safe, it’s because Donald Trump’s foreign policy is, literally, in-credible."