OAN’s Brooke Mallory
12:02 PM – Friday, February 16, 2024
Twelve women who claim that they were victims of Jeffrey Epstein have filed a lawsuit against the FBI, citing the agency’s “repeated and continued failures, delays, and inaction” as the reason the scandalized financier was able to operate his sex-trafficking enterprise for more than twenty years.
The lawsuit maintains that the FBI “fail[ed] to do the job the American people expected of it and that the FBI’s own rules and regulations required: investigate the reports, tips, and evidence it had of rampant sexual abuse and sex trafficking by Epstein and protect the young women and children who fell victim to him.”
The alleged victims, identified in court records as unnamed “Jane Does,” are requesting an amount of money that has not been disclosed as well as the government’s release of FBI records pertaining to Epstein, who passed away in custody in 2019 while awaiting prosecution.
The lawsuit is a “first step to getting to the bottom of what we have recently learned—that for years the FBI negligently failed to act on clear evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was operating a vast sex abuse operation and sex trafficking ring, as alleged,” according to a statement released by Jennifer Plotkin and Nathan Werksman, the Jane Does’ attorneys.
Despite the Palm Beach police informing the agency in 2005 that they had received tips indicating that an underage girl had been brought to Epstein’s home for sexual misconduct, the complaint alleges that the FBI did not file a case until a whole year later.
“The FBI continued to receive direct reports, complaints, and tips concerning the illegal sex trafficking of women and underage minors, sex abuse, and human rights violations committed by Jeffrey Epstein and associates” between 1996 and 2005, the lawsuit says.
“Photographs, videos, interviews and hard evidence of child prostitution” were given to the agency, seemingly being ignored, according to the suit.
The lawsuit further alleges that in 1996, a person reported to the agency that Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell had sexually abused her and other victims. However, the agency allegedly “hung up” on the complainant and “failed to act upon and investigate the complaints and tips and failed to comply with protocol and guidelines, notwithstanding credible reports of solicitation of child prostitution and sex trafficking.”
It continues by saying that the FBI kept receiving reports regarding child sexual assault even after Epstein entered a guilty plea to two state charges of child solicitation in 2006 and was mandated to register as a sex offender. However, the complaint claims that it concluded its investigation after two years.
“From 2009 until 2019, the FBI was complicit in permitting the ongoing sex trafficking of minors, rape, and sexual abuse of girls and young women which occurred between New York, Palm Beach and the US Virgin Islands, and many other locations,” the lawsuit added.
It is uncommon for the FBI to be sued for crimes that it may have been able to prevent. According to the Tort Claims Act of 1964, anybody hurt or harmed by the carelessness of a government employee may submit a claim for compensation for their losses.
A government agency has six months, under federal law, to answer an allegation. The FBI declared on Wednesday that it does not comment on legal matters. A request for comment from the U.S. Department of Justice was not immediately answered.
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