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were underage; prostitution charges in Florida (as in most places) have no age limits and the Palm Beach grand jury proposed solely a solicitation charge. But Epstein’s flamboyance and his friendship with Clinton invited the scrutiny of the Bush FBI, and ultimately Epstein and his legal team decided to go for a plea deal. The result was a baroque set of agreements with both the Feds and Palm Beach county, which mandated jail time (Epstein was sentenced to 18 months, of which he served 13—nearly all Florida prisoners serve only 70% of their officially sentenced time) and sex offender status. The deal also provided for an unusual, if not unprecedented, arrangement by which he agreed to pay the legal fees for 40 girls specified by the FBI in civil suits against him and not to oppose their claims, resulting in an overall settlement costs that may be as high as $20 million. (A bit more baroqueness: one of the lawyers representing some of the plaintiffs, Scott Rothstein, would also go to jail for recruiting investors to pay for these suits on the fraudulent basis that settlements had already been reached and that many of the listed women had agreed to take reduced immediate cash payments.) It is in part this impossible-to-explain weird-justice outcome that has made some people think Epstein was covering for someone, or something, else—perhaps his most high-profile friend? HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022920