One of the most important ongoing projects of the Frank Report is putting Clare and Sara Bronfman behind bars for years to come.
These two criminals have largely escaped prosecution – with Clare buying a plea deal with sentencing guidelines of about two years – [and a $6 million fine] and Sara fleeing the US and living in France.
In an upcoming post, I will reveal who Sara’s French connection is – who claims he can protect her from extradition. Maybe a little spotlight on him will take him out of the shadows.
Overall, this is a big task – to put wealthy criminals away. The biggest thing we have going for us, however, is that they have lots of money.
At the same time this is the biggest obstacle. They can buy their way out of trouble, they think.
But, as we saw in the prosecution of Clare ‘Legatus’ Bronfman, that Clare – the most vicious of the Nxivm criminals outside of Keith Raniere – was able to purchase, from the Department of Justice – for a $6 million fine – via her plea bargain – a deal down from racketeering etc, – which would have been 3-5 years in prison – to a deal with a 21-24 months sentencing range. [identity theft and harboring an illegal alien for profit].
It cost her about $3 million per year to buy down her sentence.
But note it well — she could not completely buy off a prison sentence. She was still charged and the Department [Store] of Justice was thrilled to get her $6 million – and shave off a few years – but they had to give her some prison time.
It is no doubt true that Clare would have been willing to pay more to buy it down further – but the feds had to be worried about optics.
She could not buy it down to zero. That would be too obvious to the world that money buys justice at the Department of Justice in America [which it does, of course].
So how could the feds get more from Bronfman?
Simple. They have to charge her with more of the crimes she actually committed. And they have to have the willingness – the guts – to go after the big fish again.
It is not easy to go after big money defendants, for they can afford lawyers.
In the US – if you cannot afford a lawyer [I’m not counting public defenders who are overworked, underpaid, are usually not top flight, have no time or money budget for extraneous things that ensure justice – like case prep, hiring investigators, interviewing witnesses etc..- and if you have one – even if you are innocent – you are going to prison for a long time – if you don’t take a plea deal].
The system works that way.
So the DOJ going after poor to middle class people – innocent or not – means it does not have to worry too much about evidence or other inconvenient matters.
Clare Bronfman would be willing to buy justice is she is forced to buy some.
Since a middle class defendant cannot afford top attorneys – in a federal prosecution – which is very expensive – they usually just take plea deals – innocent or not. But, with the wealthy, who can afford lawyers, the DOJ has to prove their case. And they hate to do that.
It takes up time and resources and a conviction stat is the same whether it is a poor person or rich one.
The only difference is the fines collected.
Still, in the Bronfman case – she committed plenty of crimes, which will be easy to prove.
The purpose of Operation Legatus then is to expose their crimes and lay them out on a silver platter for the DOJ.
Now there has to be both carrot and a stick for most people. The same is true of bureaucracies – which is, at the end of the day, precisely what the Department of Justice is – a bureaucracy. Its stock and trade is putting people in prison – and getting fines.
Prison for the poor – and fines from the rich.
The DOJ could easily reel in $20-$30 million in fines – as these two sisters willingly buy down their prison sentences in plea deals.
Maybe the feds already know their crimes. Then again, maybe they don’t.
It does not seem the DOJ is presently doing any serious investigation of the two sisters – so maybe it’s best, as I did for Raniere, to lay out their crimes and help the investigation along.
I find it is best to lay the crimes out publicly – then they are harder to ignore and the readers offer insights and knowledge in the comments section.
I am, of course, not appealing to the Department of Justice to do this out of a sense of justice. Like any Orwellian-named bureaucracy, I know them better than that. Justice is not the goal. Never was and never could be.
This is nothing to be angry about.
It is simply a bureaucracy. They cannot pursue justice but only the optics of justice. The optics require convictions and fines. People in prison and fines collected. This is how they are judged – as individual offices – or districts – and as individual prosecutors.
No one in the DOJ was ever promoted by exonerating wrongly accused defendants. Almost every career prosecutor was promoted by conviction stats – which – it is a hazard of the trade – means putting some innocent people in prison.
It works that way.
At one time there was a principle of justice ascribed to by men like Franklin and Adams – and perhaps known best as Blackstone’s Ratio.
It is that “It is better that 10 guilty ones go free than one innocent suffer.”
The concept that innocent people should not go to prison – just to create a society where every guilty person goes to prison – is now obsolete.
The old idea was that it is better to have a type of due process and fair trials that lean toward the defendant. In case he is innocent – even if it is close – he should get the benefit of the doubt. This kind of system means that some guilty people go free.
It does not work that way in America.
Innocent people go to prison every day – mostly through plea deals – because they can’t afford to defend themselves, or they have been grossly over charged [coercive plea bargains] and because the system [especially the federal system] is slanted toward the prosecution. [Most federal judges were formerly prosecutors].
So innocent people go to prison all the time – and that is good for optics – since convictions – the numbers – prove the bureaucrats are doing their job at the Department of Justice.
Justice is hard to measure, but convictions are easy.
So let’s be clear – I am not appealing to the Department of Justice – as seekers of justice – to go after Clare Bronfman and her sister.
It is immature to think that this could be their goal.
One has to view them as bureaucrats who want to work as little as possible and be promoted based on the standards of their bureaucracy – which is convictions and money collected.
In this case, I am appealing to the Department of Justice – not for conviction stats- they can get that easily by over-charging poorer defendants – and making plea deals.
I am appealing to the DOJ based on their need to collect fines. They sell justice to the rich all the time – and they get credit for it. That goes on their stats.
The Department {Store] of Justice is usually willing to wheel and plea deal with rich defendants – money versus a lighter sentence. They did this once already with Clare.
Here is a chance for the Department of Justice to make another large sale of justice – to both of the Bronfmans – and for real crimes – not phony ones.
Phony crimes are part of the stock and trade of the Department of [in]Justice. Studies by the Innocence Project have proven consistently that about 10 percent of defendants who took plea deals were factually innocent. But conviction stats are more important than justice. Bureaucracies work that way. Whatever a bureaucracy is tasked with doing – optics are more important than reality.
The crimes involve racketeering – crimes of serious consequences.
So please pay attention in the coming days as we lay out the true crimes of Sara and Clare Bronfman.
Clare Bronfman [left] with her sister Sara Bronfman-Igtet.
