Democratic National Committee officials raised red flags about a Florida lawyer who defended sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, turning him down as a host for a Miami event with President Obama, according to hacked emails published on Wikileaks.
Roy Black co-hosted a fundraiser for Obama in 2007. But in May 2016, after additional vetting, Kevin Snowden, Deputy Compliance Director at the DNC, wrote, “I lean no to [Black] hosting but would be OK with [him] attending” an event.
The vetting correspondence highlights a February 2016 Miami Herald article, which claims federal prosecutors were “cowed by Epstein’s high powered attorneys, including Roy Black.” It goes on to say that that was part of the reason the billionaire sex offender received an extraordinarily lenient sentence despite reportedly abusing at least 34 underage girls.
Snowden wrote that “coincidentally,” the Miami Herald article about Epstein’s sentence came out on the same day in February that another POTUS event, which Black was cleared to attend, was cancelled.
The DNC’s vetting report also said that Black has a “wild reputation, has defended unsavory characters (Rush Limbaugh, Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis), parties with flagged celebrities, accused of ethical violations by former US Attorney.” It mentions that he has also defended Alex Rodriguez and Justin Bieber.
Just a day after the DNC’s emails about Black and Epstein, FoxNews.com reported that Bill Clinton had flown on the billionaire pervert’s private jet, the “Lolita Express,” 26 times, far more than originally reported.
As the DNC noted in a May 19, 2016, news roundup, Epstein also had ties to Donald Trump.
The Mother Jones story referenced by the DNC included a 2002 quote from Trump: “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”