There’s more mysterious news related to the Epstein case today. Earlier this week a Florida State Senator named Lauren Book (she’s a Democrat) wrote a letter to Republican Gov. DeSantis asking for an investigation of Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw. Bradshaw was Sheriff during Jeffrey Epstein’s brief stint in jail and supervised the very special work-release arrangement that allowed Epstein to leave jail up to 12-hours a day, six-days-a-week to do whatever it is he does for a living. Now State Sen. Book says she is receiving threats warning her to back off:

Florida Sen. Lauren Book has reached out to Capitol police after receiving an anonymous warning connected to her demand for a state inquiry into Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw’s handling of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s lenient work release program, the Miami Herald has learned. Book, a vocal advocate for child sexual assault survivors, said she also received more than a dozen calls by Bradshaw’s political supporters asking her to back off on her call for an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement into Bradshaw… “I’ve received countless phone calls saying ‘Little girl you don’t know what you’re getting into,’ and telling me that I should just stop,’’ said Book, a child sexual abuse survivor who has worked to pass strict sex offender laws in Florida. In a statement, the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office said it had no knowledge of anyone trying to threaten or pressure Book.

Palm Beach County has said it will, in essence, investigate itself to see if anything should have been done differently. I think we can all guess how that will turn out. But today Gov. DeSantis said he will consider a state investigation of the situation.

There is also a Russian interference angle to this story. A former Palm Beach County Sherriff named John Dougan fled to Moscow after an FBI raid of his home in 2016. He now runs a blog from Russia which is supposedly aimed at revealing corruption within his former home county. That sounds extremely sketchy to me but Dougan has claimed that Sheriff Bradshaw used the pretext of “imminent danger” to look into State Sen. Book’s phone and emails. The Sheriff’s Office has denied this but Book has asked Capitol Police to investigate.

All of this comes after reports last week that Epstein’s work release arrangement was even cushier than it had appeared:

Picked up by his private driver in a limo and allowed to make stops at his own home. Contact 5 has uncovered new details about Jeffrey Epstein’s time spent outside of his Palm Beach County jail cell. Deputy logs show Epstein was escorted to his home by deputies at least 9 times. He sometimes spent two or three hours inside while a deputy provided/maintained/conducted security outside his home. On July 11, 2009 for example, a deputy wrote that he escorted Epstein to his house and “provided security to prevent unwelcome guest from entering his property.”… Earlier this week, a Fort Lauderdale attorney claims “more than one woman” was propositioned by Epstein at his Florida Science Foundation office, while visiting him during work release hours. “He was not sitting there conducting some scientific research for the betterment of the community,” attorney Brad Edwards told reporters at a press conference in New York City on Tuesday. “[The women] believed that they were going there for something other than a sexual purpose, and while there, surprisingly to them, the situation turned sexual.”

The Sheriff’s Office told WPTV 5 that sex offenders are not allowed to have work release as a rule. So why was Epstein allowed out? Apparently, because he didn’t formally register as a sex offender until he left jail. So the fact that he was a convicted sex offender during his time in jail didn’t matter to Sheriff Bradshaw, only the fact that technically, he wasn’t registered. It’s just one more mysterious instance in which Epstein got special treatment from people in power. I sincerely doubt that any run-of-the-mill sex offender who wasn’t a billionaire with connections to powerful people would have been given a 12-hour day pass to travel around in his personal limo.