Why is no one talking about Barry Krischer?

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

The Florida prosecutor who allowed Jeffrey Epstein to get away with the abuse of children is a very popular guy in Palm Beach.

The YWCA of Palm Beach County (“eliminating racism, empowering women”) offers the Barry Krischer Humanitarian Award and the Domestic Violence Council has a Barry Krischer scholarship.

Last year, the ADL honored Krischer with its Jurisprudence Award.

The Florida Bar had honored Kirscher with a lifetime achievement award and he’s still listed as a member in good standing. Even Jeb Bush had bestowed a Peace at Home award on the prosecutor.

Krischer sits on the Criminal Justice Commission and offers training to law enforcement, court personnel and child welfare providers on dealing with crimes of sexual violence. His bio states that he remains active in “child welfare issues” through his work with the Department of Children and Families.

The former Palm Beach County State Attorney had made national news three times during his career. Once when he went after Rush Limbaugh, then after Ann Coulter, two Republicans, and when, after being handed the case of Epstein, a co-founder of the Clinton Global Initiative, he gave him a pass.

Barry Krischer is a Democrat. Jeffrey Epstein is a billionaire donor to Democrats.

As Chief Prosecutor, Krischer had made his reputation with a zero-tolerance policy of prosecuting juveniles as adults. But after Epstein had abused underage girls, Krischer, according to the detective on the case, ignored police efforts to charge him with four counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor and instead the billionaire abuser was indicted only on a minor charge of solicitation of prostitution.

Interviews with over a dozen girls and witnesses were ignored.

The victims were not notified of when they needed to appear before Krischer’s Grand Jury. Calls by the police to issue warrants for the arrest of Epstein and his associates were ignored by Kirscher’s subordinates. Eventually, Kirscher’s people stopped taking phone calls from the police.

The Palm Beach police chief claimed that information was being leaked to Epstein’s lawyers and wrote a public letter attacking Krischer and urging him to disqualify himself from the case. Instead the travesty went on. State prosecutors allowed Epstein to skip sex offender counselling, and hire a private shrink.

When the judge asked assistant state prosecutor Lanna Belohlavek if all the victims had signed off on the deal, she claimed that they had. The lawyer for the victims has said that was not the truth.

As a sex offender, Epstein should have been in state prison, but instead he received a private wing in the Palm Beach County stockade.

“There’s significant budget cuts in the county already, and sending him to the county jail and not the Dept. of Corrections is a significant cost to the taxpayer and the county,” the judge had objected.

But reporting to the stockade allowed Epstein to hire Palm Beach sheriff’s deputies as his security while he spent the day in his office on his work release program. The deputies stayed in the front room of his office, during the time that he was supposed to be in prison, while visitors went into his private office.

The deputies stopped calling Epstein an “inmate” and began referring to him as a “client”.

Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, a Democrat, oversaw the illegal arrangement.

Bradsaw and Krischer were political allies.

After 13 months of this, there was another year of house arrest in which Epstein was able to fly his jet around the country and around the world. Before long, he was partying with the smart set, including Charlie Rose, Katie Couric, Woody Allen and Chelsea Handler. And his case was forgotten. Until now.

The Palm Beach police chief had referred the case to the FBI, hoping to hit Epstein with federal charges. The Feds were able to assemble a 53-page indictment. And they too folded. The U.S. attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, is now Trump's secretary of labor. And that explains the sudden renewed interest.

But, unlike Epstein’s Democrat pals, Trump wasn’t hanging out with Epstein after the truth came out.

Epstein’s victims were originally denied justice because of his connections to Democrat politicians. They may now receive justice as part of an attack on a Trump cabinet member in the post-Clinton era.

But why did Epstein get a pass from the feds?

Acosta allegedly told Trump transition officials that he had been told to back off Epstein. “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” he allegedly said.

Meanwhile Epstein had served as a key federal witness and received “valuable consideration” in the Bear Stearns case. The hedge fund managers in the Bear Stearns case however were acquitted. This is yet another mystery in the big question of how Epstein made his money and where it came from.

In a world where financial dealings are carefully tracked by the media, that is its own mystery.

Epstein was supposedly a money manager, but his clients are unknown. His firm, Financial Trust Co. is located in the Virgin Islands. As are a number of other companies with bland names like NES and Maple Inc. that he used to make his purchases. After a decade of litigation, his true net worth is still unknown.

According to one acquittance, Epstein claimed to have helped African dictators hide their stolen money.

Jeffrey Epstein spent his career moving in rarefied social, political and financial circles. It’s unknown who in the government might have given Acosta a “stand down” order in regard to prosecuting him.

And we may never know.

The actual dirty work was handled by Ann Marie Villafaña, a federal prosecutor, who wrote to Epstein's lawyer, "I would prefer not to highlight for the judge all the other crimes and all the other persons that we could charge.”

No mention has been made of her even though she had been rebuked in a previous child sex case.

Meanwhile media outlets, instead of asking Barry Krischer any hard questions, enthusiastically quote a letter by Krischer attacking Acosta.

All the facts of the Epstein case had been available a decade ago. The media chose to ignore them until after the Clintons had flamed out. The timing of the media’s interest in Epstein is its own cover-up.

Now the media wants to talk about Acosta and Trump, instead of Clinton and Krischer.

But the story begins with Krischer.

According to Palm Beach’s top cop, the prosecutor had wanted to nail Epstein. And then something changed. At some point in the case, Barry Krischer may have received his own “stand down” order.

But Krischer’s history is almost as interesting as Epstein.

Epstein was politically protected. And so was Krischer.

When Krischer was sued by a legal secretary who accused him of groping her, the National Organization of Women organized a rally in his defense. One of Krischer’s former state attorneys, Thomas H. Schnieders, would later beat his mother to death with a crowbar. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity. And, instead of going to prison, has been sent to a mental health facility.

The Florida Bar lists his membership as lapsed.

But that’s not the strangest story involving Barry Krischer. In 1986, Mark Baltes was killed in a hit-and-run. The driver of the car hired Krischer, then merely a lawyer, to keep his identity anonymous and make a deal. The mystery dragged on for over two years. Investigators used Krischer’s connections to track him down and discovered that the driver was his lawyer’s tenant. When he was caught, Krischer’s client got off with probation, receiving immunity in exchange for a confession, despite showing no remorse.

These days, Krischer is one of the founders of The Children's Place at Home Safe, an organization that claims to help abused children of around the same ages as Epstein's victims.

The next Barry Krischer Humanitarian Award will be handed out in October. Unless the truth comes out.