Stan Pottinger and the Epstein Coverup
A January 7, 1996, New York Times article, “Powerful Lawyer’s Path to Hot Author,” reports that Pottinger had retired from Wall Street as an “investment banker” in the mid-1990s and become a novelist. Ballantine Books fronted Pottinger a staggering $500,000 for his first novel The Fourth Procedure, a medical thriller. Pottinger wrote four novels: “I’m content now, he said. “The writing life is the best there is.”
Though Pottinger had retired from a life of coverups and facilitating CIA arms trafficking, he either volunteered to coverup the child sexual abuse of Jeffrey Epstein, his old friend and business partner, and/or markers were called in for him to fulfill the obligations of his Faustian pact.
In 2008, Edwards was practicing law in Hollywood, Florida, and he was the first attorney to represent an Epstein victim in civil litigation. His initial Epstein-related client, Courney Wilde, had been molested by Epstein when she was 14 years old. I’ve come to believe that Edwards did not harbor ulterior motives when representing the victims of Epstein other than justice—unlike some attorneys who would subsequently represent Epstein victims.
Edwards wrote a book, Relentless Pursuit: My Fight for the Victims of Jeffrey Epstein, about his representation of numerous Epstein victims that also delved into Epstein’s personal animus and threats towards him. Edwards displayed tremendous courage as he persevered through great difficulties, including a major risk to his career, as he fought to actualize justice for the Epstein victims he represented. Relentless Pursuit also discusses how Pottinger inserted himself into the Epstein case.
After living in Australia for 13 years, Virginia Giuffre moved back to Florida, because she wanted to help Edwards litigate the Crime Victims’ Rights Act case on behalf of the Epstein victims. The Crime Victims’ Rights Act mandates that the Justice Department notify victims of crimes that their case is being adjudicated, but the Justice Department contravened that law: Epstein’s victims were notified after his sentence and non-prosecution agreement had been finalized, so they were denied a dialogue with Epstein’s prosecutors and/or the opportunity to confront Epstein. In a further glaring injustice, the Justice Department attempted to ensure that the Epstein plea deal would remain forever secret by sealing it.
Shortly after Edwards had his first meeting with Giuffre, he was at home and in bed at 11:30 when Pottinger phoned him and introduced himself. He said that he was a former assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. Pottinger had ostensibly retired from a career of government cover-ups and dirty deeds, and he was writing novels. But he told Edwards that he “sometimes works with David Boies.” Boies, the senior partner of Boies Schiller Flexner is one of America’s most powerful attorneys in the country, and he was also representing some of Epstein’s victims.
Pottinger told Edwards that he represented an Epstein victim, and said that he and David Boies would “like to work with” Edwards on the behalf of the Epstein victims. Throughout Relentless Pursuit, Edwards harbors suspicions that Pottinger was affiliated with the CIA.
Boies, too, had been in Epstein’s orbit. Edwards had an Epstein “message pad” that had been impounded by the feds, and Boies had phoned Epstein on February 25, 2005, but he did not leave a message. The latest tranche of emails and documents, released by the Justice Department contains an August 20, 2010 email from a redacted source and the subject line is “Yom Kippur Breakfast Guest List-Jeffrey Epstein. Boies is one of the invitees. I’m not aware of any Epstein victim represented by Pottinger or Boies who was told of their prior relationship with Epstein.
According to CBS News, Pottinger would represent “20 Epstein accusers,” but it’s unclear of the exact number of Epstein victims he represented.
One Epstein victim who’s very damaged alleged that Pottinger “sodomized” her.
Epstein survivor, Sarah Ransome, wrote an autobiography, Silenced No More: Surviving My Journey to Hell and Back, about her brutal life, which included repeated molestations by her step-father. Her prior damage made her easy prey for Epstein and Maxwell and also for Pottinger and, for that matter, Boies.
After Boies conscripted Pottinger to abet his “representation” of the Epstein victims, he continued to represent serial rapist Harvey Weinstein. And legal scholar Deborah L. Rhode wrote a November 9, 2017, New York Times Op-Ed about his underhanded tactics on behalf of Weinstein’s defense. Boies is fond of deploying Black Cube, a private intelligence agency founded by Israeli intelligence officers, that specialize in dirty deeds. In November of 2017, The New York Times announced that it had severed its ties with Boies, because he deployed Black Cube to spy on its reporters and prevent the publication of a damaging story about Weinstein—while Boies was defending the Times in a libel case. Rhode notes Boies’ various ethical transgressions when he represented Weinstein, but Boies experienced no consequences for his “egregious” behavior. Boies also deployed Black Cube on Rose McGowan, who was in the first wave of actresses who accused Harvey of sexual assault.
After the Rhode Op-Ed, Boies and Pottinger devised a plan to redeem Boies’ good name, and it included a very reluctant Sarah Ransome. She ostensibly wrote a New York Times November 15, 2017 Op-Ed stating that Boies was a bellwether of compassion and understanding: “Having read the article by Prof. Deborah L. Rhode criticizing the lawyer David Boies, I doubt that she has any firsthand experience with how Mr. Boies deals with rape and abuse victims. … When I was in the depths of despair from having been trafficked by very powerful, wealthy people, I was unable to find anyone who would take my abuse seriously. Mr. Boies heard me and came to my rescue.”
But, according to a Law360 article from August 22, 2022, the Op-Ed bestowing Boies’ virtues was a sham: “Ransome also alleges she was asked to put her name to an op-ed, written by another attorney who works closely with Boies, John Stanley Pottinger, titled ‘How David Boies Saved Me.’” An excerpt from the article discusses Ransome’s reluctance to support the Pottinger and Boies’ scheme: “Ransome agreed to say she had written the piece, but said she felt as though she couldn't say no, according to the grievance. Pottinger did not respond to a request for confirmation or comment.”
Ransome was represented by Boies Schiller Flexner when she attempted suicide in 2018. As she was recovering from her suicide attempt, and receiving both psychiatric and pain medication, Pottinger pressured her to accept her settlement from the Epstein Victims' Compensation Program. “We are just on the verge of racking up larger costs as the case comes closer to trial and there will be more depositions, more travel, the retention of expert witnesses, and the like,” Pottinger writes in an email. “But right now, neither side has accumulated big costs. Which suggests this is a time to settle if settlement is a possibility.”
Pottinger’s predatory email accentuated the importance he placed on Epstein Victims’ Compensation Fund, because Epstein victims who settled with the Program signed a release stating that they wouldn’t initiate lawsuits against other perpetrators—like Ghislaine Maxwell. The Program was a superb tool to cover up the crimes of Epstein’s co-conspirators not only by quashing civil litigation but also by negating the victims’ depositions.
Pottinger’s name appears in email exchanges between Epstein and Kathy Ruemmler, who was formerly Obama’s White House Counsel and then Chief Legal Officer & General Counsel at Goldman Sachs—she resigned from Goldman Sachs after the latest tranche of emails was released. The email exchanges between Epstein and Ruemmler discuss Donald Trump “supposedly” molesting a 13-year-old girl at Epstein’s home in 1993. But Epstein’s emails to Ruemmler are difficult to decipher: ""pottinger worked his way into my office to te=l me that " very annoyed I called and got his telling me the a=ove.”
In the 1970s, Southern Air Transport was exposed as being owned and operated by the CIA. In 1979, the airline was sold to James Bastian, a former CIA lawyer, and Bastian disavowed that Southern Air Transport had any connections to the CIA.
But Bastain’s repudiation of the airline’s affiliation with the CIA changed in October of 1986. On October 5th, 1986, a C-123K military transport aircraft, owned by Southern Air Transport, took off from the Ilopango Military Base in El Salvador, carrying a stockpile of rifles, ammunition, and explosives that were to be air-dropped into the Nicaraguan jungle for the Contras, which were the “freedom fighters” the CIA was illegally supplying with arms. But the C-123K never made it to its destination, because it was shot down by Sandinista forces, killing three of the four-man crew. The sole survivor, Eugene Hasenfus of Wisconsin, was subsequently captured. Under interrogation, he began to detail what he knew of the wide-ranging plot to arm the Contra rebels.
Hasenfus’ confession would ultimately unveil a nasty little secret of the CIA: The CIA deployed Southern Air Transport planes to illegally ship weapons to Iran, using Israel as a middleman, and using the profits to arm the Contras against the leftist Nicaraguan government. Ergo, Iran-Contra.
Drop Site News reported: “Miami International Airport made plans to demolish the hangar where Southern Air Transport was suspected of smuggling cocaine, a former U.S. Army depot that had been used by the CIA for more than twenty years. With Epstein acting as Wexner’s “logistics man” in Ohio, in 1996 Southern Air Transport finished relocating its world headquarters to Columbus to deliver products from factories in Hong Kong and southern China directly to Wexner’s network of Limited Brands’ stores.”
Indeed, in October of 1998, Southern Air Transport declared bankruptcy shortly before the CIA Inspector General released its official findings on the Iran-Contra that linked the airline to allegations of Contra cocaine trafficking from Nicaragua.
The New York Times and Epstein
The New York Times obviously had an agenda to disavow Epstein’s connections to intelligence—foreign and/or domestic. It’s repeated omissions are blatant. The Times interviewed Brad Edwards for “Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons,” but, apparently, its reporters didn’t read his book or they, once more, cherry picked.
In Relentless Pursuit, Edwards provides an interesting anecdote about his various encounters with Igor Zinoviev, one of Epstein’s bodyguards. ‘You don't know who you're messing with and you need to be really careful,” Zinoviev told Edwards. “You are on Jeffrey's radar and somebody that Jeffrey pays a lot of attention to, which is not good, you don't want to be on Jeffrey's radar.” Edwards asked Zinoviev who he should be afraid of. Zinoviev looked across the table and whispered “C-I-A.’” According to Edwards, one of Zinoviev’s first assignments during Epstein’s 13-month detention in 2008 was to visit CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. There, he says, he attended classes for a week as the only private citizen in the room. At the end of the week, the director or assistant director — Zinoviev couldn’t remember — handed him a book with a handwritten note inside. He was told not to read it and to deliver it directly to Epstein in jail.
