Alleged child sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein donated heavily to Democrat candidates and committees during the years he was exploiting underage girls, an Open Secrets analysis found.
The billionaire hedge fund manager was arrested on Saturday and charged with sex-trafficking and for abusing a large network of underage girls more than a decade after his alleged crimes were first revealed by the Palm Beach Police.
According to an investigation by the Miami Herald, Epstein actively exploited girls as young as 14-years-old from at least 2001 to 2005.
Democrats have launched an effort in recent days to turn the sordid Epstein saga into a political problem for Republicans, however, the high-flying financier socialized with both Democrats and Republicans over the years, and significantly more Democrats than Republicans benefited from his political donations.
From 1989 up until 2003, Epstein donated more than $139,000 to Democratic federal candidates and committees and only $18,000 to Republican candidates and groups, OpenSecrets revealed.
In addition to President Bill Clinton, “Epstein donated $77,000 to Democrats John Kerry, Richard Gephardt, Chris Dodd, and other high-profile politicians and committees,” according to the nonpartisan research group. Kerry, who served as secretary of State under Democrat President Barack Obama, received a total of four $1,000 donations from Epstein between 1991 and 2002 while he was a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, according to Open Secrets’ records.
Dodd received a $1,000 contribution from Epstein during his reelection campaign in 2003, but returned the contribution in 2006 after the trafficking allegations came out.
Epstein more recently contributed $10,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) in October 2018, but the committee swiftly returned the donation four days later.
Sen. Chuck Schumer — who took to the Senate floor this week to call on Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta to resign and for President Trump to “answer” for his relationship with Epstein — also collected thousands of dollars in donations from the alleged pedophile throughout the 1990s, the New York Post reported.
Federal Election Commission records show that Schumer received seven $1,000 donations from Epstein between 1992 and 1997, first as a US congressman from New York and then when he was vying to be the state’s senator in 1998, an election he won.
Epstein — who was arrested Saturday and charged with sex trafficking and a related conspiracy count for allegedly sexually abusing a vast network of underage girls — also gave $10,000 to Victory in New York, a joint fundraising committee established by Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Epstein gave an additional $5,000 to Win New York, a Schumer-associated joint committee that benefited the Liberal Party of New York state.
Both of Epstein’s donations to the committees came in October 1998 — and look to have primarily benefited the DSCC and the Liberal Party of New York, as Epstein would have already met the $2,000 limit on donating individually to Schumer.
At the time, donors could give $1,000 to a candidate per election — once in the primary and again in the general.
That means Schumer and Schumer-linked entities received a combined $22,000.
Schumer spokesman Angelo Roefaro told the Post: “While these campaign accounts closed about 20 years ago, and even then the campaign never controlled the two political action committees (PACs), Senator Schumer is donating an equal sum to anti-sex trafficking and anti-violence against women groups.”
According to the analysis of One America News (OAN), from 1999 to 2016, the deep-pocketed Epstein favored Democrats over Republicans more than 18 to 1.
Perhaps, not surprisingly, according to OANN, the top recipient of Epstein’s political contributions was Hillary Clinton, who received $21,000 from the accused pedophile, followed by Virgin Island Democratic Delegate Stacey Plaskett in 2016.
ANALYSIS: Jeffrey Epstein Political Contributions Favor Democrats Over 18 to 1 – @OANN pic.twitter.com/skkMujnF1r
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) July 10, 2019
Epstein did make a few donations to Republican candidates over the years, Breitbart reported. Those candidates included “former New York Sen. Al D’Amato ($2,000), former New York Rep. Rick Lazio ($2,000), former Texas Rep. Phil Gramm ($2,000), former Sen. Bob Dole ($1,250), former Ohio Gov. John Kasich ($1,000), former Minnesota Sen. Rudy Boschwitz ($1,000), former President George Bush ($1,000), and former Oregon Sen. Bob Packwood ($1,000).”
According to Open Secrets, “Epstein was one of the largest investors in the hedge fund managed by Bear Stearns and a key federal witness in the criminal prosecution of two of Bear Stearns’ top executives in 2008.”
That same year, the “sweetheart” non-prosecution agreement between prosecutors and Epstein’s legal team was negotiated, leading some to speculate that Epstein’s involvement in the Bear Stearns case played a role in the extremely lenient plea deal. The alleged sex offender was sentenced to only thirteen months in a private wing of the Palm Beach County jail and allowed him work release privileges, “which enabled him to leave the jail six days a week, for 12 hours a day, to go to a comfortable office that Epstein had set up in West Palm Beach,” the Miami Herald reported.
President Trump’s Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta has been under intense fire for brokering that deal while he was the U.S. attorney in Miami.
According to Daily Beast reporter Vicky Ward, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta told members of President Trump’s transition team that he was told “to back off” of Epstein in 2008 because Epstein “belonged to intelligence.”
Ward reported that Trump transition interviewers wanted to know if Acosta’s handling of the Epstein case was going to “cause a problem” for him at his confirmation hearings for labor secretary.
Acosta apparently said that he’d had just one meeting on the Epstein case where “he’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had ‘been told to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade.'”
“I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” he reportedly told his interviewers in the Trump transition.
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