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Compounding Epstein’s predicament, the world outside of his carefully constructed and controlled environment is someplace that he seems not just ill-equipped to handle but in which he seems to be blindly grouping about (i.e. he’s totally tone deaf). I visited him once during this time and found him weighing the conflicting advice of some of the most vaunted and egomaniacal lawyers (along with Dershowitz and Black, celebrity criminal attorney, Gerald Lefcourt, and Clinton prosecutor, Ken Starr) of the day— anyone with new advice, Epstein seemed to hire—as well as a catchall of the leading crisis managers, who he seemed to retain at will, all wrangling for fees and primacy. Certainly, the upshot of his dealings with the Justice Department seem to involve a through-the-looking-glass logic. The government threatens to prosecute him (with the possibility of a 10-year sentence) and various friends, associates, and lovers, or offers an ass-backwards sort of deal in which Epstein’s lawyers have to go to the Palm Beach authorities and get them to agree to charge him with an offense that will send him to jail and get him a sex offender status. Except that a solicitation charge won’t produce that result. Therefore he has to agree also to a procurement or pimping charge (even though he has paid money, not received it—the sine qua non of pimping). What’s more, he has to agree to pay the legal fees of any of the girls who want to sue him—and, not to defend himself from their suits— forcing him to settle with each of the girls for what are reportedly high 6- figure sums or more. He’s sentence to jail in 2008 for 18 months and serves 13 (while Epstein is now frequently accused of somehow managing to cut short his sentence, almost all Florida prisoners serve only 70% of their officially sentenced time). This hardly ends the legal catch all. Epstein's butler, Alfredo Rodriguez, steals and tries to sell an alleged journal or calendar with Epstein’s activities—but he tries to sell it to an undercover agent. Rodriguez is sentenced to 18 months in jail on a charge of theft and of withholding evidence (and a further two and half years on a related gun charge). Scott Rothstein, a lawyer whose firm represented additional girls in their suits against Epstein, also goes to jail for recruiting investors to pay for these suits on the fraudulent basis that settlements had already been reached. It’s the largest fraud in Florida history and Rothstein receives a 50-year sentence. Then, Brad Edwards, Rothstein’s former partner, sues the federal government in 2008 for abridging the rights of two of the original complainants under the Crime Victim Rights Act (giving victims the right to be consulted about the disposition of their cases) regarding the Justice HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022743