The judge who signed the search warrant that allowed the FBI to raid former President Donald Trump’s home previously quit his job as a U.S. Attorney to represent accused accomplices of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, a new report revealed Tuesday.
Judge Bruce Reinhart signed off on the warrant that allowed FBI agents to raid Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Monday, sources told the New York Post. His name appears on the docket of a sealed warrant that is reportedly associated with the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.
According to the Miami Herald, as federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida were negotiating a plea deal with Epstein, Reinhart had resigned from his post as a federal prosecutor effective Jan. 1, 2008. Just days after quitting, multiple accused accomplices of Epstein hired Reinhart as their legal representative.
The accomplices later received federal immunity for allegedly engaging in the sex trafficking of female children.
In 2011, lawyers for Epstein’s victims questioned Reinhart over his knowledge of the Epstein case prior to retiring, but Reinhart insisted that he was not involved in the investigation. Two years later, the U.S. Attorney’s Office that formerly employed Reinhart filed a court document contradicting his claims, which said “while Bruce E. Reinhart was an assistant U.S. attorney, he learned confidential, non-public information about the Epstein matter.’’
Reinhart asserted in an email to the Herald in 2019 that he didn’t do anything wrong because he didn’t represent Epstein.
“Even assuming I had participated ‘personally and substantially’ in the Epstein investigation [which I did not], the relevant Department of Justice regulations only prohibited me from communicating with, or appearing before, the United States on behalf of Mr. Epstein,’’ he said.
Reinhart declined to say if he was paid by Epstein for representing his accused accomplices. Among those who Reinhart represented was Epstein’s assistant Sarah Kellen, also called Sarah Vickers, who allegedly scheduled visits between Epstein and underage girls three to four times a day, according to authorities.
The U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Florida appointed Reinhart as a United States Magistrate Judge in March 2018. According to a press release announcing his appointment, the selection panel reviewed 64 submissions, and interviewed 15 candidates and five finalists for the position. Reinhart also successfully passed an FBI and IRS background investigation to earn the appointment.
After the raid on Trump’s Florida home on Monday this week, “Civil War” began trending on Twitter. By about 9:30 p.m. EST – approximately three hours after Trump announced the FBI raid on his social media platform, Truth Social – “Civil War” had been tweeted more than 35,000 times and started trending in the Political Figures and Politics categories.
