French police have searched the Paris apartment of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the offices of a model agency belonging to his alleged associate Jean-Luc Brunel, himself accused of rape and of procuring minors for his friend.
The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed that investigators had carried out searches at Brunel’s Karin Models in the 8th arrondissement of Paris and at Epstein’s luxury 800 sq metre apartment on the exclusive Avenue Foch near the Arc de Triomphe.
Police sources told local media the search of the late US financier’s residence, part of a French probe into allegations that he and others had for years trafficked underage girls for sex, began at 3pm on Monday and continued until 4am on Tuesday.
Epstein’s Franco-Brazilian butler told the Franceinfo news site that the apartment contained a specially built massage room to which “a great many women” had come. He added that he was not able to judge whether any of them were minors.
Epstein was arrested on 6 July in New Jersey after returning in his private jet from Paris. He pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking involving dozens of girls as young as 14, but on 10 August was found hanged in his cell.
The disgraced financier’s ownership of an apartment in Paris, and allegations from women who say they were abused in France, last month prompted French authorities to open their own criminal investigation into half a dozen possible charges of rape and sex abuse, including of minors.
The probe focuses on potential crimes committed against French victims in France and abroad, and on suspects who are French citizens, the Paris prosecutor has said. Police have appealed for victims and witnesses to come forward.
The whereabouts of Brunel, who founded Karin Models in 1978, has been unclear since August. He has been named as a close friend of Epstein’s who often flew on his plane and visited him in jail in Florida when he was serving a previous 13-month sentence for procuring a girl under 18 for prostitution.
The Frenchman, who now lives mainly in the US and has denied all wrongdoing, has been accused in court documents of rape and procuring minors for Epstein, who at one time counted Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew among his friends.
Three women have already given evidence to investigators in France. They include a former Dutch model, Thysia Huisman, who has told the Guardian how she was invited to Paris in 1991 with the promise that Brunel would make her famous, but subsequently drugged and raped by the model scout in his flat.
As part of his presidential primary campaign and efforts to outflank the rise of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sanders announced a wealth tax that would hit multibillionaires like Bezos especially hard. The Amazon CEO would pay more in annual wealth taxes than the net worth of the 50richest Americans as listed by Forbes.
“I don’t think billionaires should exist,” Sanders told The New York Times. If his tax plan were put into effect, billionaires would lose half their wealth in 15 years, provided all other factors (like their stock prices or business values) remained constant.
While Warren’s proposal also taxes billionaires at a higher rate than multimillionaires, Sanders’ plan, announced Tuesday, is far more punitive to those at the very top — reflecting the strong support for taxing the rich among certain voters.
Warren’s plan would impose a tax of 2% of wealth over $50 million and 3% on wealth over $1 billion. Sanders’ plan starts at a lower wealth level – taxing those worth $32 million at 1% – so his tax would hit about 180,000 families versus about 75,000 households under Warren’s proposal.
The sliding scale of the Sanders plan also quickly escalates for wealth over $500 million, which would be taxed at 4%. Wealth over $10 billion would be taxed at a rate of 8% — more than four times the highest wealth-tax rates that European countries once imposed. The high rates at the top are the main reason Sanders projects his tax would raise $4.35 trillion over 10 years, compared with Warren’s, which is estimated to raise $2.6 trillion.
Here are some examples of the annual wealth tax bill that some of today’s top billionaires would pay, in addition to whatever income taxes, property taxes and payroll taxes they already pay.
2019 wealth tax bill estimates
- Jeff Bezos — $9 billion
- Bill Gates — $8.6 billion
- Warren Buffett — $6.6 billion
- Mark Zuckerberg — $5.8 billion
- Larry Page — $4.8 billion
- Charles Koch — $4.8 billion
- Larry Ellison — $4.7 billion
- Sergey Brin — $4.6 billion
- Rob Walton — $4.2 billion
- Jim Walton — $4.2 billion
Note: Estimates are based on the net worth of each individual as reported by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
President Trump’s tax and tariff policies form the heart of an economic program that he’s promised will help average Americans. The hard data, however, show that he’s actually imposed substantial costs on about 70 percent of Americans.
That’s because of both the growing burdens imposed by both the tariffs and the tax changes that provided no relief to the nearly 43 percent of U.S. households that paid no income tax before, less than nothing to five percent whose taxes went up, and not much to an additional 22 percent of Americans whose small tax benefits are dwarfed by the negative income effects of Trump’s tariffs.
It may get even worse. If the president goes ahead in December with his plan to increase and expand tariffs on imports from China, 80 percent of the country—roughly 102 million households with 258 million people—will be worse off under his economic program.
The tariffs directly raise the prices for thousands of foreign and U.S.-made goods produced with Chinese or European parts. The U.S. companies that sell those goods lose some business; and as we pay more for some products, we have less left to pay for everything else. So, consumers cut back and businesses follow suit, forcing them and their suppliers to cut the hours their employees work or their jobs—setting off another round of cutbacks by households that squeezes more companies and workers. On top of all this, retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports by China and the European Union trigger similar cutbacks by American companies and workers. His trade program dampens our Gross Domestic Product (GDP), loses jobs, and lowers incomes and wages.
For most Americans, those costs exceed any savings they can incur from the president’s tax changes. It’s a reminder of just how dramatically his tax program favors the high-income bracket. To begin, 42.7 percent of “tax-paying units” (households and spouses filing separately), covering 154 million people in 2018, got little or nothing from Trump’s tax cuts, because their incomes were too small to trigger income tax liability before those changes. Trump’s decision to cap people’s deductions for their state and local taxes also turned his tax program into a tax increase for five percent of households, living mainly in high-tax blue states.
Additionally, the 2017 tax changes provide so little for the lower 40 percent of tax-paying households that Trump’s tariffs wind up swamping those meager tax benefits. Across the bottom quintile, or 20 percent of taxpayers, the tax benefits averaged just $60 per-household in 2018, and the benefits for the next 20 percent of taxpayers amounted to $380. Trump’s tariff program costs the average household an estimated $690 in foregone income.
That estimate is based on the Tax Foundation’s calculations that Trump’s current tariffs have shaved $62.5 billion per-year from our GDP, and that foreign tariffs imposed in retaliation cost our GDP another $25.6 billion. GDP may just be a particular way of measuring the value generated by the economy, but almost all of it ultimately translates into people’s incomes.
In an interview with Hack, the world’s most renowned natural historian said previous governments had been “saying all the right things” but this had suddenly changed.
“You are the keepers of an extraordinary section of the surface of this planet, including the Barrier Reef, and what you say, what you do, really, really matters.”
“And then you suddenly say, ‘No it doesn’t matter … it doesn’t matter how much coal we burn … we don’t give a damn what it does to the rest of the world.’”
The veteran conservationist responded to Scott Morrison bringing a lump of coal into Question Time in February 2017, when he was Treasurer.
“I don’t think it was a joke,” he said.
“If you weren’t opening a coal mine okay I would agree, it’s a joke. But you are opening a coal mine.”
He also commented on the recent federal election, which Mr Morrison won with a platform of support for new coal mines, including the proposed large Adani mine in Queensland, as well as a less ambitious emissions reduction target than Labor.
Asked how politicians can carry the public with them on taking action on climate change, he said politicians had “to appeal to what people think is right.”
“Do you think it’s right that we go on destroying the natural world?” he said.
But he also made an economic argument for action: “We have to convince bankers and big business that, in the end, the long-term future lies in having a healthy planet. And unless you do something about it … you’re going to lose your money.”
And one for basic self-preservation: “The world is going to be running short of food, seriously short of food.”
Tens of millions could be exposed to crop failure and famine in the next few decades due to climate change, according to the UN panel for assessing the science of climate change, the IPCC.
On the global climate strike and mass protest
Speaking to Hack ahead of last week’s global climate strike, the 93-year-old threw his support behind young people taking to the streets in protest.
Following her U.N. address about the existential threat posed by a rapidly warming planet, citizens across the United States confirmed Monday they were perplexed by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old who apparently has no desire to see the world end. “I know she’s from another country, but she’s still a teenager, right?” said 33-year-old Sophia Williams of Kenosha, WI, her confusion reportedly shared by millions of Americans who recalled that during their own adolescence they had hated the world and everyone in it and had felt the end couldn’t come fast enough. “I don’t understand why a high school kid like her isn’t locking herself in her bedroom and writing bad poetry about how nothing matters and everything is meaningless. Instead of going around the world and giving speeches in which she urges people to save the planet, shouldn’t she be commiserating with her friends about how pointless life is and how we’d all be better off dead? I just don’t get it.” At press time, an online survey found that a majority of Americans agree someone should make sure Thunberg’s parents are aware of her unusual behavior in case she needs to seek help.
“Do not put the phone in my face!” one officer, identified as “Gonzalez,” shouts in the second of two clips posted online. The cop then swats the phone from Williams’ hand, and it lands with its camera facing skyward. The recording captures multiple MPD officers grabbing Williams from all sides.
“Oh my god!” Williams shouts. The cops then shout at him to “stop resisting,” to which Williams repeatedly screams that he is not resisting and can’t breathe.
According to an arrest report obtained by New Times, the three officers arrived on scene after Williams’ ex-girlfriend asked for assistance in removing some items from their house. The cops do not state in their arrest documents that Williams acted violent toward them — instead, an officer listed as W. Gonzalez stated that he arrested Williams simply for getting too close to him with his cell phone.
“The defendant then continued to place his cellphone within very close proximity of my face, once again breaching the distance within my reactionary gap, at which point I advised the defendant that he was under arrest, at which point I grabbed the defendant by the arm and attempted to directed [sic] him to the ground to effect the arrest,” Gonzalez wrote. Gonzalez further alleged that Williams continued to tense his body and that he only entered a police vehicle “after another struggle.”
Williams is now charged with disorderly conduct and resisting an officer without violence, both misdemeanor charges.
Reached via phone, Williams told New Times that when he arrived on the scene, the officers prevented him from entering his apartment without explaining much about why. After the officers told him to move across the street, he said he was confused why the trio then followed him to the other sidewalk. Once the cops swatted his phone away, he said he was stunned that his phone wound up catching more of the incident by accident.
”I was shocked my phone even picked up the part after they knocked it out of my hand,” he said last night. “I only got my phone back after I got out of jail. I didn’t think my phone caught all that.”
Williams says that, once the cops pinned him on the ground, they repeatedly punched him in the head. He said he felt like he was experiencing concussion symptoms and still has scrapes and bruises on his face and hands this week.
Rouhani’s comments in a Fox News interview came in response to President Trump criticizing Iran during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York earlier in the day.
“Today, America, unfortunately, is the supporter of terrorism in our region, and wherever America has gone, terrorism has expanded in the wake,” Rouhani told Fox News’s Chris Wallace.
The Iranian leader said he was “amazed at the interpretations of Mr. Trump vis-à-vis terrorism,” and pointed to U.S. actions in Syria as an example of what he characterized as terrorism in the Middle East.
“The country that is present and flying over the air space of and bombarding the soil of the country of Syria without permission of the government is the United States of America,” Rouhani explained to Wallace.
During his speech at the U.N. on Tuesday, Trump warned Iran against an escalation of malign activity in the Middle East amid rising tensions between the two nations.
The U.S. last week hit Iran’s central bank with additional tariffs in response to attacks on Saudi Arabian oil facilities.
The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have blamed the attacks, which were claimed by Houthi rebels in Yemen, on Iran. Tehran has denied involvement.
