International
Ghislaine Maxwell to be sentenced in Epstein sex abuse case
NEW YORK (AP) — Ghislaine Maxwell, the jet-setting socialite who once consorted with royals, presidents and billionaires, is set to be sentenced Tuesday for helping the wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse underage girls.
The 11 a.m. sentencing in New York is the culmination of a prosecution that detailed how the power couple flaunted their riches and prominent connections to lure vulnerable girls as young as 14, and then exploit them.
Prosecutors said Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial, sexually abused children hundreds of times over more than a decade, and couldn’t have done so without the help of Maxwell, his longtime companion and onetime girlfriend.
“Maxwell’s conduct was shockingly predatory. She was a calculating, sophisticated, and dangerous criminal who preyed on vulnerable young girls and groomed them for sexual abuse,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
In December, a jury convicted Maxwell of sex trafficking, transporting a minor to participate in illegal sex acts and two conspiracy charges. Prosecutors say she deserves 30 to 55 years in prison.
Maxwell, 60, has denied abusing anyone. Her lawyers have asked U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan to impose a sentence of no more than five years.
“The witnesses at trial testified about Ms. Maxwell’s facilitation of Epstein’s abuse, but Epstein was always the central figure: Epstein was the mastermind, Epstein was the principal abuser, and Epstein orchestrated the crimes for his personal gratification,” they wrote in a court filing.
Epstein and Maxwell’s associations with some of the world’s most famous people were not a prominent part of the trial, but mentions of friends like Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Britain’s Prince Andrew showed how the pair exploited their connections to impress their prey.
Over the past 17 years, scores of women have accused Epstein of abusing them. Many described Maxwell as acting as a madam who recruited them to give massages to Epstein.
The trial, though, revolved around allegations from only a handful of those women.
Four testified that they were abused as teens in the 1990s and early 2000s at Epstein’s mansions in Florida, New York, New Mexico and the Virgin Islands.
Three were identified in court only by their first names or pseudonyms to protect their privacy: Jane, a television actress; Kate, an ex-model from the U.K.; and Carolyn, now a mom recovering from drug addiction. The fourth was Annie Farmer, who identified herself in court by her real name after speaking out publicly.
They described how Maxwell charmed them with conversation and gifts and promises that Epstein could use his wealth and connections to help fulfill their dreams.
Then, they testified, she led them to give massages to Epstein that turned sexual and played it off as normal.
Carolyn testified that she was one of several underprivileged teens who lived near Epstein’s Florida home in the early 2000s and took up an offer to massage him in exchange for $100 bills in what prosecutors described as “a pyramid of abuse.”
Maxwell made all the arrangements, Carolyn told the jury, even though she knew the girl was only 14 at the time.
The allegations against Epstein first surfaced publicly in 2005. He pleaded guilty to sex charges in Florida and served 13 months in jail, much of it in a work-release program as part of a deal criticized as lenient. Afterward, he was required to register as a sex offender.
In the years that followed, many women sued Epstein over alleged abuse. One, Virginia Giuffre, claimed that Epstein and Maxwell had also pressured her into sexual trysts with other powerful men, including Prince Andrew. All of those men denied the allegations and Giuffre ultimately settled a lawsuit against Andrew out of court.
Federal prosecutors in New York revived the case against Epstein after stories by the Miami Herald in 2018 brought new attention to his crimes. He was arrested in 2019, but killed himself a month later.
Eleven months later after his death, Maxwell was arrested at a New Hampshire estate. A U.S., British and French citizen, she has remained in a federal jail in New York City since then as her lawyers repeatedly criticize her treatment, saying she was even unjustly placed under suicide watch days before sentencing. Prosecutors say the claims about the jail are exaggerated and that Maxwell has been treated better than other prisoners.
Her lawyers also fought to have her conviction tossed on the grounds of juror misconduct.
Days after the verdict, one juror gave media interviews in which he disclosed he had been sexually abused as a child — something he hadn’t told the court during jury selection. Maxwell’s lawyers said she deserved a new trial. A judge disagreed.
At least eight women have submitted letters to the judge, describing the sexual abuse they said they endured for having met Maxwell and Epstein. Four of them plan to make oral statements at sentencing, including two women — Annie Farmer and Kate — who testified at the trial.
In letters to the judge, six of Maxwell’s seven living siblings pleaded for leniency.
Anne Holve and Philip Maxwell, her eldest siblings, wrote that her relationship with Epstein began soon after the 1991 death of their father, the British newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell.
They said Robert Maxwell had subjected her daughter to “frequent rapid mood swings, huge rages and rejections.”
“This led her to becoming very vulnerable to abusive and powerful men who would be able to take advantage of her innate good nature,” they wrote.
Prosecutors called Maxwell’s shifting of blame to Epstein “absurd and offensive.”
“Maxwell was an adult who made her own choices,” they wrote to the court. “She made the choice to sexually exploit numerous underage girls. She made the choice to conspire with Epstein for years, working as partners in crime and causing devastating harm to vulnerable victims. She should be held accountable for her disturbing role in an extensive child exploitation scheme.”
Larry Neumeister And Tom Hays, The Associated Press
From Heartland Daily News
By 
From presidential candidate Donald Trump’s promise to reinstate military members who were fired for not getting COVID-19 shots to a federal court decision favoring employee vaccination preferences, vaccine mandates at work appear to be coming to an end.
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, Illinois ruled employees at Wisconsin health care system Aspirus, Inc. can go forward with their claim that they were unlawfully denied a religious exemption from having to accept a COVID-19 shot. Aspirus claimed the employees’ real reason for not wanting the shots was secular, not religious.
Public Employees Protected
In 2023, Texas updated Section 81B.003 of the state’s health and safety code prohibiting vaccination mandates for state and local government employees. Before the change, employees had to prove a health risk or religious convictions to be granted an exemption.
Texas has taken the lead in prohibiting government agencies from issuing mandates for people to get vaccinated. Similar laws have passed in Florida and 11 other states: Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah.
Private Employees’ Rights Unclear
Private employers are a different matter says Javier Perez, a board-certified labor and employment law attorney with Crain Brogdon LLP in Dallas
“Despite the new protective laws for [government] employees, unless there is a specific law prohibiting employer vaccine mandates, employers can still, generally speaking, impose workplace vaccine mandates so long as they do not discriminate,” said Perez, a board-certified labor and employment law attorney with Crain Brogdon LLP in Dallas. “The employer has wide discretion to decide what the rules of the road are in their workplace.”
The dynamics in the workplace have changed, says Perez.
“My sense of the job market is that employers can replace people who won’t comply,” said Perez. “But with a lot of jobs pivoting to remote work—more than we thought possible—it’s kind of an easy way, on a temporary basis, to work around those risks.”
Mandates ‘Have Backfired’
Despite the lack of clarity in employer-employee relations, the tide is turning against vaccine mandates and other COVID-related work rules, in particular failures to accommodate religious exemptions, says Douglas P. Seaton, J.D, Ph.D., president of Upper Midwest Law Center.
“These mandates, based on shoddy or no science, have backfired because they have resulted in serious levels of suspicion of the bona fides of all new government regulation, especially when ‘science’ is claimed to be the rationale,” said Seaton.
‘Simply Shut Up’
In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Massachusetts could not pass a vaccination mandate to protect the individual but could do so “to protect the public from a dangerous communicable disease.”
Historically, the public health bureaucracy had been relatively circumspect in exercising that enormous power to control individual behavior, says Linda Gorman, director of the Independence Institute’s Health Care Policy Center. Things began to change in the 1990s when public health researchers and government health bureaucracies were captured by the notion that the British, Canadian, and European health care systems were better than the U.S. system because they were government-controlled.
“They apparently believed that health would improve, and costs would fall, if patients, doctors, and suppliers would simply shut up and do as they were told,” said Gorman.
‘Power Is Attractive’
The COVID-19 pandemic tested that power. Instead of systematically providing the best available information to individuals about the new COVID vaccine and allowing informed consent, the bureaucrats resorted to brute force to make people do as they were told, says Gorman.
“Power is attractive, and I see no sign that the health bureaucracy will give up its vast powers without a fight,” said Gorman. “The tragedy is the backfire has made people suspicious about all vaccine recommendations, and unknown numbers of people will die and suffer severe health consequences as a result.”
The COVID overreach made credentialed experts’ ethical failings evident, says Gorman.
“It is now obvious that government health bureaucracies see no harm in lying about efficacy, disease risk, and data quality in order to achieve their own end,” said Gorman.
“The first question is, ‘What do we do about it?’” said Gorman. “The second is, “Who should people trust for the accurate information they need to make informed decisions about their medical care?”
Kenneth Artz ([email protected]) writes from Tyler, Texas.
Daily Caller
Former Acting ICE Director Says Biden Admin’s Border Policies Empower Cartels, Undermine National Security
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Former Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tom Homan criticized the Biden administration’s border policies Friday on Fox News, arguing that they empower criminal cartels and undermine national security by allowing millions of immigrants into the country.
Border Patrol has encountered more than 7 million migrants at the southern border since the Biden-Harris administration took office, according to Customs and Border Protection. Homan said that the U.S. will continue to face significant illegal immigration unless former President Donald Trump returns to office.
“They’re not going anywhere, unless President Trump’s back in the White House,” Homan told Laura Ingraham, talking about an influx of migrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. “Then they’re bringing thousands a day through the CBP1 app … Historic numbers. Mexico stepped up enforcement a little bit. Why? Because they don’t want President Trump to be president. You know who else don’t want President Trump to be president? The criminal cartels in Mexico who are making billions of dollars every month.”
The CBP1 is an app used by migrants seeking asylum to preschedule appointments for processing at the US-Mexico border, according to American Immigration Council.
“The government of Mexico don’t want President Trump to be president because the gravy train’s over. The terrorist organizations around the world who are using the southwest border as an entry point in this country, they don’t want President Trump to be president either,” he added.
Thousands of illegal migrants and other non-citizens convicted of serious offenses such as homicide and sexual assault are currently at large in the U.S, according to federal data disclosed in a letter on Wednesday. The letter, addressed to Republican Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales, indicates that there were over 662,566 non-citizens with criminal records on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) national docket as of July 21, encompassing both detained individuals and those not in custody.
A Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua is reportedly exploiting the Biden-Harris administration’s border crisis to expand its operations into the United States, with experts indicating that immigration authorities are unable to identify members of this group prior to their arrival on American soil.
During a forum hosted by Oprah Winfrey on Sept. 19, Vice President Kamala Harris gave an evasive response when asked about her strategy for tackling illegal immigration. She referenced her tenure as California’s Attorney General and a prosecutor, then shifted to discussing the failure of a bipartisan border bill, but never directly addressed the issue.
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