Tick, tick, tick…the highly suspicious deal that gave Bill Clinton’s billionaire buddy Jeffrey Epstein a slap on the wrist for paying underage girls for sex may finally be subjected to pubic scrutiny and even overturned, bringing with it the possibility of bargaining against real punishment in exchange for testimony against a bigger fish.  This development is thanks to a court filing on the last day of 2015 that received only limited local publicity.  More on that in a moment.

Shockingly, the deal that handed out token punishment to the statutory rapist has been hidden from the public and from the victims themselves:

Federal prosecutors in Florida intentionally kept underage victims of billionaire perv Jeffrey Epstein in the dark about his plea deal, newly unsealed court papers reveal.

The documents also show prosecutors wanted to keep the extent of Epstein’s alleged sex crimes away from a judge reviewing the deal.

“I will include our standard language regarding resolving all criminal liability and I will mention ‘co-conspirators,’ but I would prefer not to highlight for the judge all of the other crimes and all of the other persons that we could charge,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Villafana wrote to one Epstein lawyer in September 2007.

Another email shows she agreed to stop sending notifications about the non-prosecution deal to 34 underage girls Epstein allegedly sexually preyed upon after his lawyers complained.

The feds say they struck the deal in return for Epstein pleading to state charges involving a single victim. 

Slap on the wrist does not begin to describe the leniency.  Ace summarizes:

 This plea involved the slap on the wrist sentence of 13 months -- and he got to spend his waking hours at his Palm Beach mansion. That is, he only had to check into his "jail" eight hours a day.

Note: Epstein slept in a vacant wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade, so he was spared the ordeal of interaction with other prisoners.

So this friend of Bill committed statutory rape on multiple victims and had to check into the Graybar Hotel to sleep in solitude, but once he got up, he was free to go to his lavish Palm Beach mansion for 13 months, and that’s it?  And the mainstream media is not at all interested in this?  Ann Coulter saw the problem a year ago, speaking to Sean Hannity:

This is a really important story. And I so love that you're pitching it just as a Clinton sex scandal, but it is so much more than that. And it's appalling that the only place that covered it last night -- I watched TV, every station -- was Megyn Kelly. God bless her. At least we got it out there. This is not just a Clinton sex scandal; this is the elites getting cozy and covering up and protecting one another. It also involves the Bush administration, it involves Ken Starr, the lawyers for Epstein.

There are some facts that are absolutely known, there are some that are only allegations right now. But the basic story is that Jeffrey Epstein -- there's a major Palm Beach police investigation, a young girl, 15-year-old girl's mother went to Palm Beach police back in 2006 and said my daughter is being paid to have sex with this rich man in Palm Beach. Palm Beach police staged a very detailed investigation without Epstein's knowledge.

They went through his garbage, they get sworn statements from about a half-dozen of the victims as well as this slightly older girl who was procuring them. The evidence was quite strong and the same prosecutor that was going after Rush Limbaugh for back pain medication for two years wants to just give him a little ticket, just pay ten dollars and that's enough for having sex with these underage girls, that's of course statutory rape in Florida.

The Palm Beach police went mental after they staged this investigation and put all the evidence together. So they went to the federal government. That's where this case comes involved. The U.S. Attorney who actually was a good guy but he is described in a letter to whom it may concern that showed up in The Daily Beast just these astonishing attacks that his office came under from Jeffrey Epstein's defense team including Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz, Roy black, all of the legal dream team.

The prosecutors private's lives were investigated and according to the U.S. Attorney they were just pressured, jerked around, everything was appealed. Eventually they get Epstein to agree to plead guilty to a state charge, allegedly sentenced to 18 months, in fact it was 13 months and for 16 hours a day he was allowed to go to his mansion in Palm Beach. So he got basically no jail time. He is a registered sex offender.

There is a federal law sponsored by, among others, [Former] Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and it says victims are asking for, could we please just have the rights of criminals. They want to be notified as a case is going forward. None of that happened in this case. A secret agreement was struck. The documents are under seal. A no prosecution agreement against not only Epstein but his lawyers and all these other friends of his. They are suing under that, they can open this case again. They could breach the no prosecution.

That case has been going on since 2008. That's Jane Doe One, Jane Doe Two. Now, Friday, the new news that brings your favorite topic into this, Bill Clinton, is Jane Doe Three and Jane Doe Four come forward and their allegations involve Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz. One of them, Jane Doe Three, Alan Dershowitz the lawyer and Bill Clinton, of course. So, that is how their names have come into this.

What I do want to say is this is not just -- I mean, who knows about the specific allegations, of course I'm saying nothing about that. All you can do is read the legal findings. The lawyer bringing this case, one of the main ones, Paul Cassell, is probably the most impressive lawyer in the country. And he's up there with Miguel Estrada. This is not a frivolous case. So keep following this case.

And the fact that thus far this has only been covered on Fox News is shocking. This is not a political thing. This is what MSNBC and the rest of the networks have been describing what they thought these fraternities, what they thought the [Duke] lacrosse rape [case was]. This is the elites circling the wagon and protecting a pederast. It's a shocking case and that's just the known facts.

But now, the prosecutors who handed out the sham punsihemnet may be forced to testify.  Michelle Dargan of the Palm Beach Daily News reported into the news vacuum on New Year’s Day:

Two teenage victimes of Palm Beach billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have filed court papers asking to depose top federal officials who were involved in inking the secret deal that saved Epstein from serious federal charges.

FBI agents, current and former federal prosecutors, and Alexander Acosta, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, are named in the motion filed by attorneys Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell on behalf of Jane Doe No. 1 and Jane Doe No. 2. The girls were 14 and 13, respectively, at the time of the sex abuse.

The victims filed the motion, in part, because of a new argument Assistant U.S. Attorney Dexter Lee made during a routine status check hearing in November.

Lee said the girls aren’t really victims because they procured other minor girls for Epstein and received money for it so they’re not protected under the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act.

“Apparently, the government believes that because Epstein pressured some of his young victims into performing sexual acts, those victims themselves were complicit in Epstein’s crimes and, therefore, are barred from seeking relief under the CVRA,” the motion says. “There has never been any public document (or other private document that we have seen) in this or any related case that has ‘accused’ Epstein’s young victims of committing ‘the crime’ that Epstein committed.”

The six witnesses they want to depose are: Acosta, FBI Special Agent E. Nesbitt Kuyrkendall, FBI Special Agent Jason Richards, former First Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Sloman, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Menchel and Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Villafana.

Filed in 2008, the lawsuit says the U.S. Attorney’s Office violated the federal Crime Victim’s Rights Act by failing to confer with the victims before signing a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein in September 2007. The agreement saved Epstein from serious federal charges and extensive prison time. Edwards and Cassell are fighting to overturn the agreement.

If the agreement is overturned and Epstein faces real punishment, he just might be the type of guy who would sing like a bird to get lenient treatment in exchange for implicating bigger fish with his testimony.  No wonder Bill Clinton is stammering when asked about whether his past is a relevant issue in his wife’s campaign.

Hat tips: Instapundit iOTW Report