to one of them and a $250,000 payment fooiive days after that miami herald story drops in november, these payments are made, his defense today trying to say it could have been out of charity that he s essentially giving these donations to these two women. prosecutors say, you know, you can t buy that. obviously this story comes out, and all of a sudden payments are made. david boyce who represents some of the victims, he was arguing that around the time the payments were being made, other employees of jeffrey epstein were supposed to take depositions in a civil case, and mr. epstein stepped forward and offered payment for attorneys for them, and they stopped cooperating, so it appears there was a lot going on behind the scenes but those payments were made after that key miami herald report and so we haven t quite seen yet and prosecutors haven t provided a definitive motive but they re saying it seems suspicious, and it shows somebody who s engaging with his possible coconspirators her
ruhle, the battle over bail for jeffrey epstein was kicked off in a new york city courthouse. thursday a federal judge is going to decide where the sex offender and multimillionaire gets to spend his pretrial process, under house arrest or in prison. prosecutors say epstein is quote a danger to the community and should remain locked up in the trial begins. the defense is trying to get him out of course, arguing epstein has not committed crimes since 2008 when he pled guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution. and let s make it clear. we re not talking about prostitution here. his attorneys propose a bail package worth up to 77 million bucks. that sounds like a lot. it s secured by the mortgage on epstein s manhattan house and his private jet as collateral. in exchange, epstein would not only get to live at that mansion, he d also have permission to leave for medical appointments while wearing an electronic gps monitoring device. he faces up to 45 years in jail and has pleaded not
conspiracy involving underaged girls. joining us from outside the courthouse, nbc investigations reporter, tom winter. the thing that struck a lot of us is what prosecutors say they found in epstein s house that could support the argument that he is a flight risk. tell us about this. reporter: yes, we just found out this morning because apparently prosecutors just found out, they took a lot of things out of jeffrey epstein s house a week ago, saturday, when they were able to get a search warrant after they arrested him, and one of the things they found was a safe and inside of that locked safe they found quote piles of cash, they found diamonds and then interestingly, they found a passport, and that passport had jeffrey epstein s picture in, it was a passport from another country but it did not have epstein s name on it. in addition, he said his country of residence at the time, and he was living in the united states, the passport said his country of residence was saudi arabia.
epstein s alleged accusers say that maxwell was involved in recruiting them and in some cases grooming them to be victims of this, and so i think the big question here is which of these is true or is both? well, if they re both true, how did the latter go unnoticed for so long. you ve got epstein s victims who have sued max well, and she settled with them, and at the same time she s the toast of the city who, you know, attending chelsea clinton s wedding after much of this came out? you re right, all of those cases were settled and it is, you know, relevant to say that she s never been criminally charged. kwo you know, what i think you re asking about is how the new york social scene could put stuff like that out of mind, and i think the answer as one socialite told me, it s just not done to ask. this woman told me half of my friends, i don t know what they do, and you know, essentially. you don t know if your dear friend recruits underaged women
it s a little bit of a conone drum. he theoretically would not have been able to use it, but that s a troubling piece of evidence that should keep him in jail pending trial. another thing that came out late that was discussed in more detail was $350,000 worth of payments that were made to two other women, possible coconspirators as prosecutors described it. we heard a little bit more about that today. basically here, prosecutors are saying this is something kwhowh risk. they were authorized to go up to a hundred million dollars. the mansion that you were talking about earlier, that really doesn t matter here because the government has sought to seize that if in fact they re able to move forward with the prosecution, so essentially, epstein s not putting up anything they argue.