A Former U.S. Attorney Discusses Where Jeffrey Epstein?s Legal Cases Will Go After His Death

Facing a criminal case for sex trafficking and sex-trafficking conspiracy, multiple civil cases by alleged victims, and a Department of Justice inquiry into his wrist-slap plea deal in Florida, Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide has opened a flurry of questions about the future status of his legal proceedings. To help weigh these questions, Intelligencer spoke with former U.S. Attorney and New York contributor Barbara McQuade about where the legal proceedings involving the sex offender go from here.How much information about Epstein and his co-conspirators will never be known because the criminal case against him closes with his death?It could be quite a bit. But I do think that it is likely that investigators will continue to investigate any co-conspirators who are involved in this case. [On Saturday, the Miami Herald reported that with Epstein’s death, “prosecutors in the Southern District of New York will likely refocus their probe on Ghislaine Maxwell, Sarah Kellen Vickers, Adriana Ross, and Lesley Groff — all of whom allegedly helped run Epstein’s operation in the mid- to late-2000s.]How might this affect the civil cases by his victims against his estate, or the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General investigation into the plea deal?I think you can still maintain the civil cases, the defamation cases, those should continue. So I think the inspector general could continue to investigate.Predator Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. The fact that he attempted and failed previously seems like he would have qualified, although I don’t know what the BOP criteria is and whether it was met.What sort of things might we learn from the FBI investigation into Epstein’s death, and the DOJ Inspector General investigation into Epstein’s death, both of which were announced today?If no charges are filed, we may not find out anything. “We’ve taken this action out of respect for the incidents of the past week, and this action does not reflect a long-term change in our video game assortment,” said Tara House, a Walmart spokeswoman, in a statement.Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok are challenging Trump’s retaliatory moves against them in courtFormer FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe filed suit Thursday against the FBI and Justice Department, claiming that his March 2018 ouster — on the day he planned to retire after a 21-year career — was politically motivated retaliation driven by President Donald Trump, who was angry at McCabe’s role in the investigation of his campaign’s links to Russia.“It was Trump’s unconstitutional plan and scheme to discredit and remove DOJ and FBI employees who were deemed to be his partisan opponents because they were not politically loyal to him,” according to McCabe’s lawsuit.