Michigan man sentenced to prison for distributing child pornography
Ethan Eversman, 25, of Ionia, was accused of requesting explicit videos from a 15-year-old in New York and sharing the videos with another person, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Officials say Eversman was a corrections officer with the Eaton County Sheriff's Office.
The case was part of Project Safe Childhood, which is a nationwide initiative aiming to protect children from exploitation and abuse.
"Today's sentencing of Ethan Eversman, a former Corrections Deputy, reinforces the FBI's unwavering commitment to enforcing the highest standards of integrity in law enforcement," said Cheyvoryea Gibson, special agent in charge of the FBI in Michigan. Members from the FBI's Lansing Resident Agency, in collaboration with our law enforcement partners at the Michigan State Police, worked tirelessly throughout this investigation, in an effort to halt Mr. Eversman's predatory actions. I also want to express my gratitude to the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Western District of Michigan for their vital role in ensuring this child predator faces justice."
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NBC News
42 minutes ago
- NBC News
Ghislaine Maxwell's meetings with Justice Department shrouded in secrecy
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche completed nine hours of meetings over two days with Ghislaine Maxwell on Friday but made no public statements about what she said or the next steps in the Justice Department's much-criticized Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Former prosecutors said it was highly unusual — and potentially unprecedented — for a the department's No. 2 official to personally interview a witness. Secrecy in a criminal investigation is normal, but the prosecutors involved in the case would typically be included in questioning. 'I've never heard of a deputy attorney general doing anything like this before,' said a former senior Justice Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Victims of Epstein and Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of recruiting and grooming multiple teenage girls to be sexually abused by the late financier, questioned the lack of transparency as well. Jack Scarola, a lawyer representing roughly 20 Epstein victims, said he asked to attend the Maxwell interviews but was not included. Berit Berger, a former federal prosecutor in New York, said the interviews by Blanche, who worked as Trump's former defense lawyer, may be performative. 'It may be just a way of being able to say, 'Look, we dotted every I and crossed every T,'' she said. 'There's value to being able to say that we've tried to speak to everyone we possibly could, including the co-defendant.' Attorney General Pam Bondi, Blanche and President Donald Trump himself have struggled to quell the uproar since the DOJ and FBI announced on July 6 that an exhaustive Epstein case review had not uncovered evidence that justified investigating other individuals. FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino — who haveboth spread conspiracy theories about the Epstein case — backed those findings and a DOJ decision to release no other Epstein case documents. Catherine Christian, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney and an NBC News legal analyst, said the Maxwell interviews could also be an effort to protect Trump, who now faces one of the largest political crises of his second term in the furor over the Epstein investigation. Trump, like dozens of other wealthy Americans, socialized with Epstein. He is among hundreds of individuals whose names appear in 100,000 pages of Epstein case documents reviewed by the DOJ and the FBI. 'It's hard to believe this is anything but performative,' Christian said. 'Or Todd Blanche, just wanting to have her on the record saying, 'Yes, President Trump had nothing to do with any of this. He was not a client.'' What was Maxwell asked? Maxwell's lawyer, David Oscar Markus, is a top Florida criminal defense lawyer and a friend of Blanche's. Blanche appeared on Markus' podcast in 2024, where the host praised Blanche's legal skills. After Friday's meeting with Blanche and Maxwell, Markus told reporters that the deputy attorney general 'did an amazing job' and asked Maxwell thorough questions. 'She was asked maybe about 100 different people,' said Markus, who did not disclose which individuals Maxwell was questioned about. 'She answered questions about everybody, and she didn't hold anything back,' he said. 'They asked about every single, every possible thing you could imagine, everything.' A senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Maxwell was granted limited immunity by the Justice Department to answer questions about the Epstein case. Granting limited immunity is common in criminal cases and allows defendants to provide information without fear that it will be used against them in court. The immunity is 'limited' because it only applies if the defendant is telling the truth. If it is determined that a defendant lied during the interviews, then the agreement becomes void. Prosecutors can take into consideration a defendant's cooperation and recommend a plea deal or a reduced sentence. This is not expected in Maxwell's case, as she has already been convicted and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. Maxwell's lawyer, Markus, has argued that Maxwell's trial was unfair and an appeal of her conviction is pending before the Supreme Court. Potential pardon or commutation Trump, like all presidents, has the power to pardon or commute the sentence of anyone convicted of a federal crime. Asked about Epstein's case on Friday morning, Trump said the focus should be on other people who socialized with Epstein, such as former President Bill Clinton and Larry Summers, the former treasury secretary and Harvard University president. 'You should focus on Clinton,' the president told reporters. 'You should focus on the president of Harvard, the former president of Harvard. You should focus on some of the hedge fund guys.' 'I'll give you a list. These guys lived with Jeffrey Epstein. I sure as hell didn't,' Trump said. Asked if he was considering granting Maxwell a pardon or commuting her sentence, Trump said, 'It's something I haven't thought about.' 'I'm allowed to do it,' he added. Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor in New York, said she believes the recent firing of Maurene Comey, a lead prosecutor in the Maxwell case and the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, was an effort to give Trump appointees full control of the Maxwell case, limit transparency and silence dissent. 'That does not seem coincidental. It seems like they wanted Maurene not to be present in the Department of Justice,' Rocah said. 'To be able to say, 'What the heck, you can't go talk to my client or my defendant.'' Rocah, a Democrat who served as Westchester County district attorney from 2020 to 2024, criticized Blanche's meetings with Maxwell, saying his apparent failure to include a prosecutor with deep knowledge of her crimes was unfair to Epstein's victims. 'The head of that entire institution that is supposed to be about protecting victims is talking to her, giving her a platform to say God knows what, without much way to verify it or not,' Rocah said. 'The real people who could test her truth-telling are the people who worked on the case, not Todd.'
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Joe Rogan On Trump Administration's Handling Of Epstein Files: 'Do You Think We're Babies?'
Podcaster Joe Rogan is beginning to wonder if President Donald Trump and his administration have respect for MAGA voters over the handling of files related to notorious child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. On his Friday episode, Rogan called out FBI Director Kash Patel for not releasing more information about Epstein, a former friend of Trump's who died in 2019 before he was set to face trial for a litany of sex crimes. Patel appeared on Rogan's podcast last month to discuss Epstein. 'When Kash Patel was on here, and he was like 'There's no, there's nothing' and I was like 'What are you talking about?'' Rogan said. 'I didn't even know what to say. My thought was — and people were like 'Why didn't you push back more?' — my thought was 'I'm just gonna put this out there and let the Internet do its work.'' Members of Trump's administration have spent years demanding the release of Epstein documents. But Trump, a longtime buddy of Epstein who wrote him a creepy birthday message and another note calling him 'the greatest,' has spent the past several weeks trying to distract from the growing crisis. ″[Patel] is saying there's no tapes, there's no video,' Rogan said. 'That doesn't make any sense. Everyone knows it doesn't make any sense.' Rogan said he was also frustrated by Patel's promise to release surveillance clips of Epstein's New York City cell where he allegedly hung himself. While that clip was released, a minute was missing from the 10 hours of jailhouse security footage. 'That film has a fucking minute missing from it,' Rogan said. 'Like, do you think we're babies? What is this?' Rogan, a friend of Trump who endorsed his 2024 campaign for president, previously blasted the administration's handling of the Epstein case. 'Why'd they say there was thousands of hours of tapes of people doing horrible shit?' Rogan said on his podcast earlier this month. 'Why'd they say that? Didn't [Attorney General] Pam Bondi say that?' Rogan continued, referring to Bondi in May saying the FBI was reviewing 'tens of thousands of videos' of the wealthy financier 'with children or child porn.' Rogan has joined a growingchorus of right-wingers disillusioned with the administration's promise to release more information about Epstein's potential co-conspirators. At a White House cabinet meeting earlier this month, a reporter asked Bondi about the lack of transparency. Trump was agitated by the question. 'Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?' Trump snapped. 'This guy's been talked about for years. I mean, I can't believe you're asking a question on Epstein at a time like this, where we're having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration.'
Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Trump's MAGA allies zero in on Ghislaine Maxwell as Epstein furor persists
The intensifying focus on the former girlfriend and accomplice of the now-deceased Epstein, a convicted sex offender and disgraced financier, represents the latest turn in a winding case that has long engaged conspiracy theorists and right-wing pundits. Maxwell, they say, can unmask powerful elites - many of them Democrats - who they believe the government has protected from prosecution. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Trump was once an acquaintance of Maxwell and Epstein and has also amplified conspiracy theories about the case. Now he finds himself under constant pressure to reveal more, even as the continued interest threatens him politically, with a slice of the world waiting to discover what else there is to know about his relationship to Epstein and whether it implicates the sitting president. Many MAGA luminaries who say Maxwell is vital to cracking the case would consider leniency, so long as she identifies the child rapists they say have gone unpunished and arms authorities with the evidence needed to convict them. Advertisement She spent hours this week in interviews with the Justice Department, marking the Trump administration's latest effort to show the president's base that he is doing something to release information about the Epstein case in response to political furor. Officials set off a firestorm among some of the president's supporters nearly three weeks ago by announcing that they were closing the case without further arrests or sharing any of the 'truckload of evidence' that Attorney General Pam Bondi said the FBI had received just months before. Advertisement Those interested in Epstein have long wondered what Maxwell might know, but fresh controversy over the case has elicited renewed urgency as additional accounts surface that illuminate the contours of Trump's relationship with Epstein. 'She is a living piece of evidence,' right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson said in an Instagram video, adding, 'If you're looking for the person to give you the truth about Epstein, there's no one better to give it to you.' Johnson then rattled off a string of conspiracy theories unsupported by facts, saying that Maxwell knows about whether Epstein was an intelligence asset, which agency he was working for, and who protected his powerful clients once Epstein was exposed. Johnson praised the Trump administration for going to her to get answers. 'This is what we've been calling for,' Johnson said, adding, 'This is what transparency looks like.' Charlie Kirk, founder of the influential right-wing nonprofit Turning Point USA, also applauded the Trump administration for 'going straight to the source' by interviewing Maxwell, which he said was evidence that officials were listening to 'the voices of the base.' Advertisement Kirk on his show floated the idea of federal officials striking a deal with Maxwell for information. 'This is so powerful. If anybody actually has the information of what has happened around Jeffrey Epstein, it's not going to be some James Comey-created file. It is going to be Ghislaine Maxwell,' he said. Right-wing commentators and conspiracy theorists have fixated on the Epstein case for years. He first faced criminal charges in 2006 related to the sexual exploitation of underage girls. Some, including current high-level Trump officials, accused the Biden administration of hiding critical information to protect powerful people who they believe participated in Epstein's alleged sex-trafficking crimes. As Trump returned to the White House, he and his top Justice Department appointees appeared to agree that the incoming administration should release more evidence. But the promised records never materialized, and the Justice Department and FBI on July 6 said in a memo that they would not release more information tied to the case, stating that a 'systematic review' failed to find evidence that would justify criminally investigating anyone else. Criminal investigative files typically are shielded from public view. Maxwell's 20-year sentence on a sex-trafficking conviction punctuated the stunning fall of a former socialite who, as the daughter of a British billionaire and former member of parliament, grew up in luxury, among power brokers. Her lawyers said she met Epstein in the 1990s after the death of her father, who was posthumously accused of embezzling large sums from his companies. Maxwell dated Epstein, a financier, and later worked as his employee, a role prosecutors said she used to traffic young sexual abuse victims to Epstein. Maxwell denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty, but in 2021, a jury convicted her of sex trafficking a minor and related crimes. Advertisement Epstein was found dead in his jail cell while awaiting trial in 2019. His death was ruled a suicide.
