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Virgin Islands Governor Pressured Prosecutor on Behalf of Jeffrey Epstein

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


The current governor of the U.S. territory of the Virgin Islands allegedly once put pressure on a prosecutor, who has since been fired, to grant a legal waiver to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. once contacted Attorney General Denise George one-on-one to ask her to grant Epstein a waiver from travel restrictions, according to Denise George, who will serve as attorney general of the Virgin Islands until late 2022, the Epoch Times reported.

George testified under oath that Bryan, a Democrat, was “telling me that you know Jeffrey Epstein wants to have this waiver of the travel requirements, and that he said that his attorneys will be contacting me, and encouraged me to meet with the attorneys to consider it,”

The Epoch Times reported: “Vincent Frazer, the Virgin Islands attorney general from 2007 to 2015, granted Mr. Epstein a waiver from in-person reporting requirements along with a significantly reduced notification requirement. Mr. Frazer allowed Mr. Epstein to notify authorities just 72 hours before leaving the Virgin Islands, with email notification being accepted, court documents show. The waiver was granted at the request of Mr. Epstein’s attorneys, who argued that he was a businessman who needed to regularly travel to other destinations and that in-person notification would be too onerous.”

In the Virgin Islands, a law outlining requirements for sex offenders was passed in 2012. The law gave the attorney general the power to possibly relax or exempt these requirements in certain situations. One of these situations involves a sex offender who frequently travels outside of the Virgin Islands for business purposes.

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“Frazer later reduced the time from 72 hours to 24 hours after complaints from Mr. Epstein’s attorneys,” The Epoch Times reported. “Acting Attorney General Carol Thomas-Jacobs revoked the agreement in 2019 after finding no evidence to support it.”

George became the Virgin Islands attorney general last year, which then led Bryan to contact her.

George claimed that she had carefully gone over the Virgin Islands Department of Justice’s records. She gave it a lot of thought before coming to the conclusion that the records didn’t contain any strong arguments in favor of lifting the restrictions.

“I realized there was some political maneuvering that [Mr. Epstein] was doing,” George testified, based on the manner in which Bryan approached her.

“That by itself indicated to me that he was flexing his political influence over or with the governor in an effort to get a favorable result in what I considered to be definitely a law enforcement issue by the attorney general,” she noted further, adding that she found the incident inappropriate and troubling.

The former AG claimed that after she gave the matter some thought, Bryan texted her again, pleading with her to make a choice. She refused the request and claimed that, in retrospect, the governor’s behavior seemed to have changed as a result.

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JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently sat for depositions related to a pair of lawsuits linked to regarding late financier and convicted child sex trafficker Epstein in May.

His testimony came as the U.S. Virgin Islands and the banking giant traded allegations over who was the biggest enabler of Epstein’s sex trafficking of minor girls, Fox Business Network reported.

In July, the Virgin Islands sought “at least $190 million in damages from JPMorgan Chase” in one of the suits, NBC News reported.

A federal investigation has provided new details surrounding the suspicious 2019 death of Epstein.

“Jeffrey Epstein was given extra linens in a Manhattan jail cell and authorities negligently failed to assign him a cellmate or take other precautions leading up to his death in 2019, according to a newly unveiled federal investigation,” Fox News reported.

“While finding flaws with the Bureau of Prisons and its staff members, the report also uncovered no evidence to contradict the designation of Epstein’s death as a suicide. The 128-page report found that there was both negligence and misconduct – which created an environment that allowed him to kill himself and deprive ‘his numerous victims, many of whom were underage girls at the time of the alleged crimes, of their ability to seek justice through the criminal justice process,'” the outlet added.

Fox News added: “The city’s medical examiner ruled his death a suicide, but there have been persistent questions for years surrounding the circumstances before and after his death, and even his ex-girlfriend and accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, has publicly stated that she thinks Epstein was killed. Roughly a month before his death in the jail’s Special Housing Unit, for high-profile prisoners, the disgraced financier’s former cellmate told guards that he’d tried to hang himself after they found him with an orange cloth wrapped around his neck.”

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