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(in New York, for instance, at this time soliciting sex with anyone over the age of is a class D misdemeanor calling for a 100 dollars fine). In fact, Saige Gonzales told the police that she lied about being 18 because otherwise she knew she would not have been admitted to the house. The local sex crimes prosecutor, Lana Belhalevic, interviews the girls and determines that the offense is solely related to prostitution. Dershowitz rejects a series of lower-level plea deals and Palm Beach District Attorney Barry Krischer takes the unusual step of empanelling a grand jury, which returns with a recommendation of a single count of soliciting a prostitute—a charge without jail time. (And Epstein can apply to have his record expunged after a year.) At which point, Reiter, the police chief, at odds with the District Attorney’s office, recruits the involvement of the FBI. This is of course the Bush-era FBI and Epstein presents quite the Clinton-connected scandal. Still, solicitation, even of a minor, 1s not a federal crime. The FBI’s hits on the novel interpretation that if Internet solicitation can be considered interstate commerce, so can telephone solicitation, permitting them to begin a deep dive investigation into Epstein’s friends, many of whom receive subpoenas and who are threatened with prosecution as a party to Epstein’s actions. It’s all quite in the eye of the beholder: On the one end, Epstein 1s paying for sex acts (Epstein paid $200 for a massage with or without happy ending), on the other, he is abusing teenage girls. Epstein finds himself caught in an inescapable moral quandary: how can a girl not old enough to vote be a prostitute? And yet, many girls not old enough to vote are prostitutes. 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. If it was a Dickensian world, he was caught in its legal system. Certainly, the upshot of his dealings with the Justice Department seem to involve a farce-like logic. The government threatens to prosecute him (with the possibility of a 10-year sentence) and various friends, associates, HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022967