Reader query: Will Raniere’s child porn and exploitation charges go away?

I received this email from a reader who is concerned about the Eastern District of New York dropping possession of child porn and sexual exploitation of a minor charges against Keith Raniere.

Dear Frank;

I’m amazed at all the work you have personally done on this case. Yesterday, I was extremely disheartened when I heard the underage sex charge and many other charges have now been dropped against Raniere. Is he really going to get away with most of this? If so, why?

I hope you’ll follow up on this with your blog. I want to lose hope right now that these F*ckers are going to keep doing what they are doing and getting away with it because of their elite status.  This has been going on for a very long time, not just with NXIVM!

I am an adult child of SRA abuse and they use the exact same methods of control! I guarantee you this has to do with something much deeper and sicker than even you realize, and it goes all the way to the top!

Thank you for all of your personal sacrifices! Please don’t stop speaking out on all of this. Please!

K.H.

***

Dear K.H.

The US Department of Justice has 93 regional offices and each office is charged with prosecuting crimes that occur within their district.

The sexual exploitation of a minor and child porn charges against Keith Raniere were dropped in the Eastern District of NY- where Raniere is currently being prosecuted for racketeering, sex trafficking and forced labor conspiracy – because the alleged child sex crimes occurred in the Northern District of New York – in the Albany area where Raniere lived.

The Eastern District has referred these child sex charges along with evidence they collected in their investigation to the Northern District.  The Northern District has the option of prosecuting Raniere on these charges (and potentially others) or of not prosecuting him.

In the past, the Northern District has been unwilling to prosecute Raniere for reasons unknown – despite people – including former Nxivm members such as Barbara Bouchey meeting with them repeatedly and giving them evidence of some of the same crimes Raniere is now being prosecuted for in the Eastern District.

But that was before Raniere came to worldwide fame as a brander of women as sex slaves.

With a new focus on the Northern District, and with Raniere being prosecuted and quite likely convicted in the Eastern District, the odds are better than ever that Raniere will be prosecuted in the Northern District.

However, if Raniere is convicted in the Eastern District and gets 30 years or more as a sentence, there may be little incentive to expend the resources to prosecute him in the Northern District.  Raniere is 58 and a lengthy prison sentence arising out of the Eastern District prosecution will pretty much accomplish the goal of ensuring society that the public will be safe from this vicious deviant for what will most likely be the remainder of his life.

As for a deeper-seated organized, a conspiratorial child sexual abuse criminal group – which you seem to allude to – this may exist and may involve Raniere.

I personally have no evidence of it. In general, I thought Raniere was mainly a selfish guy looking for his own perverse pleasure, using women and children to serve his greedy and wicked desires and hardly interested in anyone else.

On the other hand, if he could profit off of sexually exploiting children – or working with a network of pervs – in the US, or Mexico or elsewhere –  he would probably do it – maybe not for the money but for the destructive pleasure of it.

I think Raniere thinks it is perfectly fine for the little girls he molested to have sex with him.  He taught some of his followers that society has imposed unfair age of consent standards and that children should have sex with adults.

In Mexico, the age of consent is 12, and that comports I think with Raniere’s view of the maximum age of consent for women. In fact, I suspect if Raniere wrote the laws he would have no age of consent.

He practiced what he preached and it was his undoing. The evidence of his child molesting and child porn possession is the bombshell evidence that is expected to be introduced at trial in the Eastern District – as part of the proof that Nxivm is a racketeering enterprise – which among other things – existed to satisfy Raniere’s voracious and perverted sexual appetite.

The trial in the Eastern District is likely to begin around mid-May – unless everyone – including Raniere takes a plea.

I have been told that Raniere hoped for a generous plea deal – if he could cut what is called a Third Party Cooperation Agreement – where he would provide evidence of other unrelated crimes – and, in return, get a light or no prison sentence.

What crimes he may have knowledge of is unclear, but another source told me that Raniere and his allies – including Seagram’s heiress Sara Bronfman – had high hopes when the Democrats won control of the US House of Representatives. They thought his “friends” in the Democratic Party would get the DOJ to go easy on the Vanguard.

This did not seem to pan out and, since the election last November, it appears that Sara and her sister Clare Bronfman have been distancing themselves from Raniere.

Clare is on trial with Raniere. Jury selection starts tomorrow. She is seeking to cut her own deal if she can – and it is not likely going well for the heiress who turns 40 tomorrow.

Sara Bronfman is living in France, near her hotel in Provence and is hoping that she dodged the bullet that struck her sister. However, if the Northern District does a full-scale investigation into Nxivm, particularly its financial crimes, Sara will certainly be a potential target.

Meantime, we will have to wait for the outcome of the current prosecution in the Eastern District of New York before we can expect to find out what the Northern District intends to do with the varmint that ran freely and infested the Northern District for decades with impunity.