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| Prince Andrew with Virginia Giuffre |
It likely is a safe bet that hardly anyone on the planet knows more about the Jeffrey Epstein case than Miami Herald journalist Julie K. Brown. And yet, even Brown -- who is credited with sparking a second round of criminal charges against the notorious sex trafficker -- was caught off guard by yesterday's news that the former Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom had been arrested on suspicion of misconduct related to his well-documented ties to Epstein.
The title of Brown's Substack page, "The Epstein Files," is indicative of her expertise on the subject. Here is the headline from yesterday's post: "Prince Andrew's Arrest: Across the pond in Britain, justice and accountability is a serious matter." I suspect that is a not-so-subtle dig at the U.S. justice system, which Brown seems to see as not terribly serious about matters such as accountability, fairness, and the rule of law. I wholeheartedly share Brown's assessment of our putrid court system, and as longtime readers of our Legal Schnauzer blog know, I received a graduate-level education while living in Alabama on how our courts (both state and federal) tend to spew forth rulings that have little or nothing to do with the facts as presented and the law as written.
What kind of wreckage can crooked courts inflict on the lives of everyday Americans? My wife Carol and I (we know her in the blogosphere as "Mrs. Schnauzer") are Exhibit A regarding the ruination that can befall those who are forced to participate in a system where protecting the interests of the legal tribe is No. 1 on the agenda and the dispensing of justice is not even in the top 100.
What was our court experience like? It launched when a criminally inclined neighbor named Mike McGarity and an integrity-challenged lawyer named Bill Swatek (who the Alabama State Bar has disciplined multiple times, including a suspension of his license) joined forces to file a lawsuit against me in Shelby County that had zero basis in fact or law. But defending myself against a groundless lawsuit set off a series of events that included me being cheated out of my job of 25 years as an editor at the university of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), and Carol losing several jobs (one at Southern Medical Association, one at Infinity Insurance, plus three or four sales positions). Every time we seemed to get close to landing new jobs, the offer or the interest disappeared. Somebody, perhaps angry about my reporting on court corruption at this blog, seemed to be undermining our job-search efforts -- essentially robbing us of the ability to support ourselves. That can cause a solid financial situation to turn shaky in a hurry.
That wasn't the only "robbery" we experienced. After almost 25 years of making house payments on time and in full every month, we lost our home to what appeared to be a wrongful foreclosure and got screwed on the disbursement of funds from the foreclosure sale by our mortgage company, JPMorgan Chase. After I had written unflattering stories about certain powerful, conservative political figures in Alabama -- including former state attorney general and current U.S. judge for the 11th Circuit Bill Pryor, plus Homewood lawyer and GOP political operative Rob Riley (son of former governor Bob Riley) -- someone apparently took offense and sicced Shelby County Sheriff's deputy Chris Blevins -- who gave the appearance of being intimately familiar with steroids -- on me. Blevins almost drove his cop car into the side of our house and then walked into our garage (which was underneath the main portion of our house), and without showing a warrant or stating his purpose for being there, proceeded to beat me up in my own home, knocking me to a concrete floor three times, and then spraying me in the face with pepper spray. A second officer, Jason Valenti, who threatened to break my arm, helped Blevins remove me from the garage and applied handcuffs, placing me in the back seat of a cop car for the 35-minute ride to the Shelby County Jail in Columbiana. The main charge against me was for contempt of court, apparently for failing to appear at a hearing in a defamation lawsuit Rob Riley and his lobbyist friend Liberty Duke had filed against Carol and me. Oddly, we didn't appear because we were never lawfully served, and we had filed documents challenging service, with a ruling pending when Blevins showed up in our garage.
A lawyer named David Gespass visited me twice in jail and wrote a letter, stating that he had seen the court file, which Riley had asked to be sealed, and it showed no summons had been issued, much less served. A preliminary injunction was issued against me on Sept. 30, but a summons was not issued in the case until Oct 16. That means Judge J. Claud Neilson granted a preliminary injunction against me when I had not been summoned and was not under his jurisdiction -- so there was no way I could be in contempt of court.
Still, I wound up spending five months in jail and was released only after I explained to Carol from a jail telephone how to enter the editing/publishing page of the blog and remove the posts Judge Neilson had deemed to be defamatory, a decision he made with no discovery, no jury trial, not even a legitimate hearing. In short, he did not follow the Alabama Rules of Civil Procedure, and there was no evidence to support his finding. Rob Riley did not even file an affidavit stating that my reporting was false.
I did get a touch of notoriety out of the whole dismal experience. The story received widespread national coverage -- with excellent reports from Lindsay Beyerstein at Raw Story and Scott Horton at Harper's, plus top-notch Q-and-A interviews from Joan Brunwasser at OpEd News.
Was my arrest significant? Yes, it was -- and not just to Carol and me. Here is how we summarized some of the historical and societal issues in play:
I was the only U.S. journalist to be incarcerated in 2013 (from Oct. 23, 2013, to March 26, 2014) -- the only journalist arrested in the western hemisphere that year. I'm the only U.S. journalist to be arrested since 2006 -- more than a decade -- and my incarceration is the third longest for a journalist in American history. Ranking ahead of me are San Francisco-based free-lance videographer Joshua Wolf (2006), and true-crime writer Vanessa Leggett (2001).
I am the only American journalist to be arrested in the 2000s for a case that had no criminal implications. Our research indicates I am the only journalist to be incarcerated because of an unlawful preliminary injunction, which has been an improper prior restraint under more than 200 years of First Amendment law. That means my case might represent the worst abuse of a journalist on American soil.
The case was important enough to attract the attention of The New York Times. Unfortunately, reporter Campbell Robertson butchered his interviews with Carol and me and produced a sloppy, inaccurate article.
One of the more interesting characters to cover the case was California lawyer Ken White, publisher of the Popehat blog. White unfairly bashed me at times and showed signs of right-wing bias. But I do think he knows First Amendment law and made some salient points about the case, especially if you could get past his snarky manner. White came to some nonsensical conclusions, but in general, I think he furthered public knowledge of the relevant issues. And I especially enjoyed it when he called an attorney from Rob Riley's law firm "blindingly ignorant" or "cynically dishonest."
Also, the case received coverage at several international news outlets, and my favorite was at a Russian news forum called RU Posters. It was interesting to read Russians commenting that my case proved the vaunted U.S. First Amendment maybe wasn't so great after all. In my view, the First Amendment is great, but the way crooked judges apply it can be awful.
I apologize for the detour into my own tale of legal woe, but a key theme of this post is that our justice system reeks, and it seemed an appropriate time to update readers with personal insights on just how bad our courts can be.
A couple of final personal points:
(1) There are quite a few similarities between what Carol and I experienced in Alabama and the brutality and dysfunction we now see from the Trump administration, especially in regards to detention of immigrants, often without due process of law. In essence, Alabama was ahead of the curve when it comes to crappy conservative governance.
(2) Alabama is not the only place where law-enforcement officials trample the law. After losing our house in Birmingham, we moved to Missouri where I grew up and wound up being subjected to an eviction from our apartment that was unlawful on at least 8-10 grounds. A sheriff named Jim Arnott orchestrated that fiasco, which ended with an apparent deputy (although we've never been able to find out his name and actual affiliation) assaulting Carol, slamming her to the ground and yanking on her arms so violently and awkwardly that it caused a comminuted fracture of her left arm. One medical professional termed it a dislocation of the elbow, and it required $80,000 of trauma surgery, over eight hours, for repair.
Sheriff Arnott, a devout Republican, has joined Donald Trump's ICE brigade to help rid the Midwest of immigrants. I've seen up close that Arnott cares not one whit about the law, so I wonder how many immigrants he has detained without due process, which is required by the U.S. Constitution. The issue of due process for detainees has been raised in published reports. So far, I've been unable to find a response from Arnott stating his agency is complying with due-process requirements. My guess is that the number of immigrants being detained in a constitutional manner would be close to zero.
Let's return to Julie Brown's take on the stunning arrest of the former Prince Andrew, which surely is the biggest worldwide legal story of the moment. Brown shows that the Andrew arrest has much deeper historical meaning than many Americans probably realize. She writes:
This is the most significant story involving British royalty since King Edward VIII abdicated his throne in 1936 — and the first arrest of a royal since King Charles I, who was detained in 1647 during the English Civil War. That’s four centuries ago.
Andrew, whose 66th birthday [was yesterday] was taken into custody about 8 a.m. local time, 3 a.m. EST.
As for his ties to Epstein, Andrew probably is best known for his alleged sexcapades with Epstein's sex-trafficking victims -- most notably with the late Virginia Giuffre. Andrew's arrest, however, seems to be based more on alleged financial wrongdoing than anything involving sex. Brown writes:
His arrest comes just four days after the Daily Mail reported that he passed on sensitive information about the taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland to Epstein when he was representing the UK as a trade envoy.
Documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of the Epstein Files Transparency Act revealed that Andrew leaked details he learned from meeting with bank executives in the wake of a $45-billion bailout.
Andrew also allegedly passed on other sensitive information he learned to a banker friend, according to the Telegraph.
Andrew’s association with Epstein has captured the attention of the British media for years. But in recent weeks, the scandal evolved into possible financial wrongdoing, first involving Lord Mandelson, the British ambassador to the United States, who resigned. The backlash has also put pressure on UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. A member of the Scottish Labour party asked Starmer to resign over Mendelson’s appointment, but thus far, he appears to have survived the scandal.
Interestingly, Andrew’s arrest is not concerning the 2011 sexual assault allegations that were brought against him by Virginia Giuffre — but it was recent stories in the British media about him passing on financial information to what the British press called “his pedo mate.” (Epstein, who also appears to be Donald Trump's "pedo mate.")
It’s astonishing how much accountability seems to be possible once you cross the Atlantic.
Meanwhile, neither the U.S. Justice Department nor the Treasury Department seems to have made an effort to “follow the money” involving some of Epstein’s friends and associates.
Remember, Sen. Ron Wyden — who has been investigating Epstein’s finances for years — has hit a wall because President Trump’s Treasury Department hasn’t cooperated with his probe.
GOP leaders also seem to have their heads in the sand.
In the wake of Andrew's arrest, Brown says, it is time for a serious investigation of obvious red flags that largely have been ignored:
Why didn’t the DOJ investigate Epstein and his associates’ suspected money laundering? Isn’t it clear that banks were ignoring all the flags that pointed to him?
This story is bigger than politics; it is a global scandal with implications beyond the 21-page PowerPoint presentation the FBI put together on the case in July.
And now, we have the arrest of a former member of the Royal family.
While Andrew has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, their relationship has dogged the Royal family for a decade, since Giuffre first went public with allegations that she was trafficked to the Prince when she was 17.
Giuffre is a central figure in the Andrew-Epstein story because her allegations opened the door for other victims to come forward. Sadly, Giuffre will not be here if any form of justice ever is meted out. She died by suicide in April 2025. Writes Brown:
Giuffre, who died in April, first told her story to Daily Mail reporter Sharon Churcher in 2011.
Ms Giuffre wrote in her recent memoir, Nobody’s Girl, that on the day she met Andrew in 2001, Epstein’s partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, told her “just like Cinderella, I was going to meet a handsome prince.”
A photograph that was taken at the time — of Giuffre and the prince — one that Andrew claimed might have been doctored — has come to symbolize the scandal in Britain.
Andrew had been friends with Epstein since 1999 and continued even after Epstein was charged with solicitation of a minor in 2007. In 2010, he was photographed walking with Epstein in New York.
In 2019, Andrew gave a widely criticized interview with the BBC’s Newsnight, denying Giuffre’s allegations.
Giuffre later sued Andrew, and the case was settled with a payment, said to be about $10 million. Andrew did not admit liability as part of the settlement.
As details of the Epstein story slowly surfaced, Andrew saw the trappings of fame and favor slide away:
As more revelations came to light over the past few years, Andrew was stripped of his military titles, then last year, his royal titles were officially removed by King Charles.
Prosecutors for the Southern District of New York wanted to interview Andrew about Epstein in 2020 as part of their broader probe into Epstein’s associates, but he declined to cooperate.
Late last year, members of the House Oversight Committee wrote to Andrew (whose name was changed to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor) requesting a transcript of an interview about Epstein. However, the lawmakers had no power to force him to comply.
Andrew is the third person linked to Epstein to be arrested. One of his co-conspirators, French modeling scout Jean-Luc Brunel, was arrested in December 2020 on charges of rape of minors and sex trafficking. He died by suicide in a Paris jail while awaiting trial. Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking in 2021.
Last week, Norway’s former Prime Minister, Thorbjorn Jagland, was arrested on corruption charges in connection with information Norwegian authorities found in the Epstein files pertaining to his relationship with the disgraced financier and sex trafficker.
Never in a million years did I think when I resurrected the Epstein story in 2018 it would lead to this.
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