The always intelligent and well-informed people of the internet have recently started clamoring for me to address a scandalizing new incident: an Israeli government official, it is said, was arrested in Nevada for child-sex crimes, and then, shockingly, allowed to flee the United States and return to Israel.
I thought the issue was allowing an arrested person to keep their passport and leave, not only the local jurisdiction, but the US, as well. This doesn't look like standard operating procedure. It would be good to address this aspect. Adjudicating the merits comes later, and would seem irrelevant to this flight issue. Did any of the others caught up in this operation leave the country?
Thank you Joy. Everybody with the brain knows that if they were caught up in this mess, they would not be free to leave the country. The details almost don't matter.
So poor, lonely Tom couldn’t find a hooker in Vegas? He had to go online? Was every man who went online at this website arrested? I don’t think so. If this website was so legit why was it being monitored for a sting operation?
I doubt a full transcript of what was said has been released.
Responding to alleged outrage is adorable. You picked a conspicuously easy target to critique. Why not address the way Epstein met Dershowitz? Not conducive to your absolution of Epstein and Israel?
Isn’t there some way you can blame Giuffre for this too? I don’t know why you think you need to appease or refute the internet bandwagon. You could do journalism. Like a journalist. And let the chips fall where they may. Prefacing your story as a public service is on brand for you.
Underselling it a bit aren’t we? He said that Clinton and numerous others met Epstein through this Rothschild. Not just any random Jew. Kinda the epicenter of conspiracy don’t you think? Weird that I’ve been following this saga for years and never heard anything about that. And infinitely more interesting than random nobody trying to leave the country to avoid pedo charges.
Sure, I think you encapsulated it correctly: "Kinda the epicenter of conspiracy don't you thing?" Conspiracy of what?
- Lynn Forester de Rothschild married into the family, she is not a Rothschild by birth. Does this mean she is NOT up to crazy shit. No, but just yelling "Oh look, a Rothschild" is called guilt by association.
- Forester de Rothschild was a big time political donor to the Clintons and other Democratic politicians until Obama. Then she switched to supporting Republicans including McCain, Romney, and John Huntsman. Does this mean that all three of those were compromised by Jeffrey Epstein? If you're answer is "yes", please explain. Don't just say something like "connect the dots".
In short, any association with a well-known person like a member of the Rothschilds is indeed conspicuous, but please explain why it is more than just that.
I really cannot see how these types of operations are not considered entrapment. It seems to me that the only reason law enforcement get away with it is because of the subject matter.
Actually, in this case as described, it wasn't even entrapment as there was no evidence.
My next door neighbor was correctly caught by an operation similar to this. Correctly in that he was specifically looking for significantly underage girls on the internet to have sex with and after a police woman posing as a girl told him she was fifteen he asked her to meet him. And they met in a hotel room etc etc.
He was 50 and his wife was devastated.
In my neighbor's case it wasn't entrapment, apparently he had been doing this for a while.
I’ve read the details of probable cause and declaration for arrest which in most jurisdictions means the investigating officer is stating facts under penalty of perjury. In the declaration, the detective doesn’t go into great specifics about the online conversation between Tom Alexdrovich and the decoy other than to say they made arrangements to meet somewhere and Alexdrovich agreed to bring a condom. The task force recorded the online conversation and the declaration states the decoy was “acting as a 15 year old female.” I’d be flabbergasted if the decoy didn’t make some reference to her purported age.
Pure’s terms of service are not going to a defense to this charge. Lots of dudes have tried to fight statutory rape charges on the grounds that they met someone in 21 & up bar. Doesn’t work.
By posting the 10k bail, Alexdrovich waived a probable cause hearing. Had Alexdrovich stayed incarcerated in Nevada, the investigating officer might have been forced to put forward some evidence that Alexdrovich knew this girl was underage.
Thanks for the clarification. I puzzled about two things here: can the police be so incompetent as to not have clearly indicated that she was under age. And on the flip side, I can't figure out why Michael Tracey wouldn't also be hip to what you describe.
A .pdf of the probable cause document I’m talking about is up on “Breaking Points” Locals channel. I assume Michael Tracy could post a copy here. There is enough to establish probable cause, but a prosecutor will need to produce more evidence to secure a conviction at trial. Again, the detective states the police recorded the online interaction between Alexdrovich & the decoy.
The question is whether this dude is going to show up at his trial.
Isn’t the lack of specifics reason to be suspicious? If the person clearly said “I AM A FIFTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL,” wouldn’t you put that in the affidavit?
Well that’s why you have trials where the government is obligated to provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Probably 95% of the affidavit prior to the narrative concerning Alexdrovich’s interview is cut & paste.
180 degree disagree. Police put out bait cars to catch auto burglars & car thieves. I wish they would do the same with bait bicycles. If the decoy makes it clear to the dude online she’s underage, (hell if she even hints at it) the dude should end any sex talk with her immediately.
Alexdrovich took action to meet this decoy in the physical world. I got zero problems prosecuting folks who chat up people and try to arrange sex with when they know or should know the person is underage.
In any case, we agree that if the bait person said he/she/it was underage, then sex talk or meeting for sex is a crime.
We know he was using an app for people over 18 that does age verification. We don’t know precisely what was said by the bait person, and that is the critical fact.
It is entrampment, and they are more political than anything else. In order for there to be a crime, the subject has to have actually committed a crime. That's one of the problems with the modern judicial system.
It’s bizarre how many Americans are fine with so many branches of the police conducting espionage on adult dating sites. Even if you don’t talk to the undercover officers, just your presence on such a site could be recorded and become part of evidence in someone else’s case.
But I didn’t know this was an adult dating site until Michael pointed it out in his article, so it’s possible most people just assume these are sites oriented toward children or sex crimes, or, like me, just didn’t really think much about it at all. So many single people are using these sites to date (probably foolishly), I wonder if there’s any data on how many undercover officers / influencers people randomly encounter. The odds are probably low, but perhaps higher than you’d think.
He should not have been allowed to leave the country. A judge should have noticed, given Israel's past history of failing to cooperate with extradition requests in this exact type of case, that this guy was a flight risk.
And the US attorney, a person with a lot of power and responsibility in this case, a person whose job is to represent America and American interests, should've asked a judge to take the guy's passport. But, strangely, the US attorney did not do that. Oh, and also strangely, the US attorney was born in Israel and has dual citizenship.
And Michael Tracey's response is "Nothing to see here, folks."
If this had occurred in a vacuum, your "argument" might stand, but as Greyzone and others have exposed, "israel" is a paedo haven, both for Jewish foreigners fleeing persecution as well as homegrown crimes. The rape culture in "israel" is also well known, and attested to by myriad IOF abuses of the investigative process of female IOF victims as well as Palestinian detainees. What else should we expect of a nation that seriously argues that sexual torture by the state should not be prosecuted. How many passages of the Talmud clearly give consent and approval for the sexual assault of "goyim"?
I like the way you approach it. If there is no evidence that he thought the girl was underage, there is no case, since the entrapment officer was clearly of age. If she let slip during the conversation a subtle reference to being underage, they would have to prove he picked up on it. In any case, it's clearly entrapment since there is no evidence whatsoever he would have been involved in any way with underaged girls had it not been for law "enforcement" efforts.
"if only to demonstrate that I’m not suspiciously reluctant to address whatever information people think proves me wrong"
I'll read the rest of your essay during the day. But don't go down this road, of trying to prove things to people. Stay anchored to reporting events and engaging in objective analysis.
Earlier I asked Ryan Grim in his comments section if any attempt was made to find out how Alexandrovich returned to Israel. Mr. Grim did not respond. Would you happen to know?
Did Alexandrovich return to Israel via chartered flight or commercial airlines? If he had been considered to be fleeing on August 6, there should’ve been at least one chance to intercept him before he left U.S. airspace. He almost certainly would’ve had to land in between Vegas-to-East Coast and East Coast-to-Transatlantic. So there must be either an FAA flight log or passenger record, yes? Also, the other individuals arrested were allowed to post bond, yes? Alexandrovich is due back in court next Wednesday (8/27), yes? So at this point, this really isn’t even an international incident yet, no?
We don’t gotta be unbiased. But we do gotta be fair.
If the decoy never claimed to be 15 years old and they arrested and charged him that is a pretty major f'up for an FBI sting. That would be a big story but its a pretty big leap to assume they screwed up that badly. I don't consider these kind of operations to be a waste of tax payer resources. Curious why you do ...
There is another factor involved here. NO CONTACT occurred with an actual 15-year-old. The Israeli was communicating with an agent pretending to be 15 years old. That is definitely entrapment. By the way, AUSA Villiffana thought she could charge Epstein with Internet crimes even though he never used the Internet to recruit girls for massages.
Okay but should we be assuming the FBI charged this guy without the decoy claiming to be underage?! That's a pretty big blunder. Maybe it happened but its pretty unlikely. This article is disturbing. MT seems to be more concerned with offering up unlikely excuses for the crime and even suggesting that trapping sexual predators is a waste of tax payers money.
Who amongst us hasn’t been arrested within days of being in a foreign country in government business for trying to procure sex with underage girls?
Let us not forget the true victims here. Helpless 23 year olds who once wrote a “scientific paper”. (Weird that Tracey didn’t hand-deliver this specific paper to me… what is he hiding??)
I thought the issue was allowing an arrested person to keep their passport and leave, not only the local jurisdiction, but the US, as well. This doesn't look like standard operating procedure. It would be good to address this aspect. Adjudicating the merits comes later, and would seem irrelevant to this flight issue. Did any of the others caught up in this operation leave the country?
Thank you Joy. Everybody with the brain knows that if they were caught up in this mess, they would not be free to leave the country. The details almost don't matter.
Mr Tracey has some answering to do for this article that never addressed the real issue.
So poor, lonely Tom couldn’t find a hooker in Vegas? He had to go online? Was every man who went online at this website arrested? I don’t think so. If this website was so legit why was it being monitored for a sting operation?
I doubt a full transcript of what was said has been released.
States do not have the authority to revoke American passports, let alone foreign ones, so WTF are you talking about?
Responding to alleged outrage is adorable. You picked a conspicuously easy target to critique. Why not address the way Epstein met Dershowitz? Not conducive to your absolution of Epstein and Israel?
Isn’t there some way you can blame Giuffre for this too? I don’t know why you think you need to appease or refute the internet bandwagon. You could do journalism. Like a journalist. And let the chips fall where they may. Prefacing your story as a public service is on brand for you.
How did Epstein meet Dershowitz?
https://youtu.be/gHyuW3URYB8?si=heyc8tOacrJIkSKt
2 minutes mark. But the entire interview was revealing.
You whine when he doesn't address this, and now you whine when he does.
You whine when he doesn't address this, and now you whine when he does.
So Dershowitz met Epstein through Lynn Rothschild and this proves, something something, Jewish power.
More dot connecting. Yawn.
Underselling it a bit aren’t we? He said that Clinton and numerous others met Epstein through this Rothschild. Not just any random Jew. Kinda the epicenter of conspiracy don’t you think? Weird that I’ve been following this saga for years and never heard anything about that. And infinitely more interesting than random nobody trying to leave the country to avoid pedo charges.
Sure, I think you encapsulated it correctly: "Kinda the epicenter of conspiracy don't you thing?" Conspiracy of what?
- Lynn Forester de Rothschild married into the family, she is not a Rothschild by birth. Does this mean she is NOT up to crazy shit. No, but just yelling "Oh look, a Rothschild" is called guilt by association.
- Forester de Rothschild was a big time political donor to the Clintons and other Democratic politicians until Obama. Then she switched to supporting Republicans including McCain, Romney, and John Huntsman. Does this mean that all three of those were compromised by Jeffrey Epstein? If you're answer is "yes", please explain. Don't just say something like "connect the dots".
In short, any association with a well-known person like a member of the Rothschilds is indeed conspicuous, but please explain why it is more than just that.
You're spoiling everybody's fun, Mr. Tracey!
I really cannot see how these types of operations are not considered entrapment. It seems to me that the only reason law enforcement get away with it is because of the subject matter.
Actually, in this case as described, it wasn't even entrapment as there was no evidence.
My next door neighbor was correctly caught by an operation similar to this. Correctly in that he was specifically looking for significantly underage girls on the internet to have sex with and after a police woman posing as a girl told him she was fifteen he asked her to meet him. And they met in a hotel room etc etc.
He was 50 and his wife was devastated.
In my neighbor's case it wasn't entrapment, apparently he had been doing this for a while.
I’ve read the details of probable cause and declaration for arrest which in most jurisdictions means the investigating officer is stating facts under penalty of perjury. In the declaration, the detective doesn’t go into great specifics about the online conversation between Tom Alexdrovich and the decoy other than to say they made arrangements to meet somewhere and Alexdrovich agreed to bring a condom. The task force recorded the online conversation and the declaration states the decoy was “acting as a 15 year old female.” I’d be flabbergasted if the decoy didn’t make some reference to her purported age.
Pure’s terms of service are not going to a defense to this charge. Lots of dudes have tried to fight statutory rape charges on the grounds that they met someone in 21 & up bar. Doesn’t work.
By posting the 10k bail, Alexdrovich waived a probable cause hearing. Had Alexdrovich stayed incarcerated in Nevada, the investigating officer might have been forced to put forward some evidence that Alexdrovich knew this girl was underage.
Thanks for the clarification. I puzzled about two things here: can the police be so incompetent as to not have clearly indicated that she was under age. And on the flip side, I can't figure out why Michael Tracey wouldn't also be hip to what you describe.
A .pdf of the probable cause document I’m talking about is up on “Breaking Points” Locals channel. I assume Michael Tracy could post a copy here. There is enough to establish probable cause, but a prosecutor will need to produce more evidence to secure a conviction at trial. Again, the detective states the police recorded the online interaction between Alexdrovich & the decoy.
The question is whether this dude is going to show up at his trial.
Isn’t the lack of specifics reason to be suspicious? If the person clearly said “I AM A FIFTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL,” wouldn’t you put that in the affidavit?
Well that’s why you have trials where the government is obligated to provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Probably 95% of the affidavit prior to the narrative concerning Alexdrovich’s interview is cut & paste.
Uh in what jurisdictions does a defendant waive a PC hearing for posting bail?
https://www.shouselaw.com/nv/defense/process/48-hour-hearings/. I’m not an expert in Nevada criminal procedure, but here’s a layman’s breakdown with citations. Don’t confuse a probable cause determination with a preliminary hearing.
Well hot damn that’s just not a thing in my jurisdiction
Well, knew the imaginary hypothetical girl was underage. There was no underage girl.
180 degree disagree. Police put out bait cars to catch auto burglars & car thieves. I wish they would do the same with bait bicycles. If the decoy makes it clear to the dude online she’s underage, (hell if she even hints at it) the dude should end any sex talk with her immediately.
Alexdrovich took action to meet this decoy in the physical world. I got zero problems prosecuting folks who chat up people and try to arrange sex with when they know or should know the person is underage.
I don’t think you put people in prison for hints.
In any case, we agree that if the bait person said he/she/it was underage, then sex talk or meeting for sex is a crime.
We know he was using an app for people over 18 that does age verification. We don’t know precisely what was said by the bait person, and that is the critical fact.
I don’t disagree with you. What I put in brackets about hints is common sense, not the standard for incarcerating someone.
This is all dumb entrapment with no victim or potential victim ever existing. Prison planet bs to give the system jobs.
Yes, it was entrapment. Just because he had been doing it doesn't make meeting a police officer posing as a teenage girl a crime.
It is entrampment, and they are more political than anything else. In order for there to be a crime, the subject has to have actually committed a crime. That's one of the problems with the modern judicial system.
It’s bizarre how many Americans are fine with so many branches of the police conducting espionage on adult dating sites. Even if you don’t talk to the undercover officers, just your presence on such a site could be recorded and become part of evidence in someone else’s case.
But I didn’t know this was an adult dating site until Michael pointed it out in his article, so it’s possible most people just assume these are sites oriented toward children or sex crimes, or, like me, just didn’t really think much about it at all. So many single people are using these sites to date (probably foolishly), I wonder if there’s any data on how many undercover officers / influencers people randomly encounter. The odds are probably low, but perhaps higher than you’d think.
He should not have been allowed to leave the country. A judge should have noticed, given Israel's past history of failing to cooperate with extradition requests in this exact type of case, that this guy was a flight risk.
And the US attorney, a person with a lot of power and responsibility in this case, a person whose job is to represent America and American interests, should've asked a judge to take the guy's passport. But, strangely, the US attorney did not do that. Oh, and also strangely, the US attorney was born in Israel and has dual citizenship.
And Michael Tracey's response is "Nothing to see here, folks."
If this had occurred in a vacuum, your "argument" might stand, but as Greyzone and others have exposed, "israel" is a paedo haven, both for Jewish foreigners fleeing persecution as well as homegrown crimes. The rape culture in "israel" is also well known, and attested to by myriad IOF abuses of the investigative process of female IOF victims as well as Palestinian detainees. What else should we expect of a nation that seriously argues that sexual torture by the state should not be prosecuted. How many passages of the Talmud clearly give consent and approval for the sexual assault of "goyim"?
https://borgenproject.org/child-marriage-in-palestine/
Fleeing prosecution
I like the way you approach it. If there is no evidence that he thought the girl was underage, there is no case, since the entrapment officer was clearly of age. If she let slip during the conversation a subtle reference to being underage, they would have to prove he picked up on it. In any case, it's clearly entrapment since there is no evidence whatsoever he would have been involved in any way with underaged girls had it not been for law "enforcement" efforts.
"if only to demonstrate that I’m not suspiciously reluctant to address whatever information people think proves me wrong"
I'll read the rest of your essay during the day. But don't go down this road, of trying to prove things to people. Stay anchored to reporting events and engaging in objective analysis.
Earlier I asked Ryan Grim in his comments section if any attempt was made to find out how Alexandrovich returned to Israel. Mr. Grim did not respond. Would you happen to know?
Did Alexandrovich return to Israel via chartered flight or commercial airlines? If he had been considered to be fleeing on August 6, there should’ve been at least one chance to intercept him before he left U.S. airspace. He almost certainly would’ve had to land in between Vegas-to-East Coast and East Coast-to-Transatlantic. So there must be either an FAA flight log or passenger record, yes? Also, the other individuals arrested were allowed to post bond, yes? Alexandrovich is due back in court next Wednesday (8/27), yes? So at this point, this really isn’t even an international incident yet, no?
We don’t gotta be unbiased. But we do gotta be fair.
If he does not miss his court date, then he is not fleeing. With all the attention it's getting, I would be surprised if he does not show up.
If the decoy never claimed to be 15 years old and they arrested and charged him that is a pretty major f'up for an FBI sting. That would be a big story but its a pretty big leap to assume they screwed up that badly. I don't consider these kind of operations to be a waste of tax payer resources. Curious why you do ...
There is another factor involved here. NO CONTACT occurred with an actual 15-year-old. The Israeli was communicating with an agent pretending to be 15 years old. That is definitely entrapment. By the way, AUSA Villiffana thought she could charge Epstein with Internet crimes even though he never used the Internet to recruit girls for massages.
I don't care what's true or not. Being an Israeli he should have been treated like a criminal. Don't trust them f...
Thank God we got this Jewish child sex predator off the streets.
Did you fail to read the article?
There is no evidence he was "child sex predator" yet.
Okay but should we be assuming the FBI charged this guy without the decoy claiming to be underage?! That's a pretty big blunder. Maybe it happened but its pretty unlikely. This article is disturbing. MT seems to be more concerned with offering up unlikely excuses for the crime and even suggesting that trapping sexual predators is a waste of tax payers money.
Who amongst us hasn’t been arrested within days of being in a foreign country in government business for trying to procure sex with underage girls?
Let us not forget the true victims here. Helpless 23 year olds who once wrote a “scientific paper”. (Weird that Tracey didn’t hand-deliver this specific paper to me… what is he hiding??)
Why do you keep saying “adult-only hookup app”?
Are these people known for downloading KidFucker from the App Store instead?