[Daily Beast] Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyers downplayed his possession of a foreign passport under a fake name by suggesting he’d never used it‐but prosecutors said Wednesday that’s not the case.
In a letter to the federal judge who will decide if the financier stays in jail until trial, the U.S. attorney’s office said that the travel document "contains numerous ingress and egress stamps, including stamps that reflect use of the passport to enter France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia in the 1980s."
Epstein’s attorneys then shot back that there was an innocent explanation for the passport: He acquired it as "personal protection," to hide his Jewish identity from hijackers, kidnappers, or terrorists during travel in the Middle East.
"The government offers nothing to suggest‐and certainly no evidence‐that Epstein ever used it," the defense wrote to the judge‐a day before the prosecutors did just that.
The passport‐which was Austrian but listed a Saudi Arabia address‐was found in a locked safe in Epstein’s Manhattan mansion, and prosecutors cited it in court earlier this week as evidence that the accused sex trafficker is a flight risk. |