Prosecutors have 1 million pages of evidence against Jeffrey Epstein, his lawyer revealed in court Monday — without shedding any new light on the jailhouse incident that left the convicted pedophile with bruises on his neck.
No marks were visible on Epstein’s neck, and he never appeared to be in pain during the 15-minute hearing in Manhattan federal court.
The judge overseeing the case tentatively scheduled Epstein’s trial for June 2020 after a prosecutor said the child sex-trafficking charges against him should be resolved as “swiftly as possible.”
“We don’t think any delay in this is in the public interest,” Manhattan Assistant US Attorney Alison Moe said.
Epstein’s trial is expected to last four to six weeks, and the defense will have all the prosecution’s evidence against the multimillionaire financier by Oct. 31, she said.
Defense lawyer Martin Weinberg objected to starting the trial before September 2020, saying, “We need time to review a million pages of discovery.”
But Judge Richard Berman said he was blocking out time in June 2020 on the presumption that the defense would be ready by then.
Weinberg didn’t make any mention of the July 23 incident in which law enforcement sources have said Epstein, 66, was found sprawled on the floor of his cell in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he’s being held without bail.
Weinberg declined to answer questions about the incident outside court.
Epstein, who wore dark blue jail scrubs over a brown T-shirt, didn’t speak during the hearing.
He’s pleaded not guilty to accusations he sexually abused dozens of underage girls — some as young as 14 — in his Upper East Side townhouse and his waterfront mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, between 2002 and 2005.
Berman set a Sept. 13 deadline for defense motions in the case, and Weinberg said he planned to seek dismissal of a conspiracy charge on grounds of double jeopardy tied to allegations that underpinned a non-prosecution agreement that Epstein struck in 2008 with then-Miami US Attorney Alex Acosta.
That deal was exposed last year in an award-winning series of stories by the Miami Herald, and controversy that erupted following Epstein’s July 6 arrest forced Acosta to resign as President Trump’s labor secretary.
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