MIAMI — When major news media reported on Tuesday about the death of renowned Miami criminal defense attorney Roy Black, many outlets highlighted that he was a member of financier Jeffrey Epstein’s prominent legal team in his sex-abuse case.

Well, it was only a matter of minutes, if not seconds, that conspiracy theorists began spewing on social media about a suspicious link between Black’s death and the resurging Epstein scandal that is engulfing President Donald Trump, the White House and the Department of Justice. Viral posts claimed Black’s death was “no coincidence,” calling it “another piece removed from the board.”

The reality is, Black had been fighting an undisclosed terminal illness before he died at his Coral Gables home on Monday at 80, according to his law partner Howard Srebnick and the Black family.

“Roy was courageously battling a life-threatening illness for many months, requiring aggressive treatments, which ultimately led to dehydration and renal failure,” they said in a statement provided on Wednesday to the Miami Herald.

The coincidental timing of Black’s death thrust the legal legend into the Epstein cauldron stirred up by right-wingers and MAGA constituents who have widely condemned the Justice Department — along with Trump — for not disclosing the full record of the federal government’s sex-trafficking case against the New York and Palm Beach billionaire, as had been repeatedly promised by the president when he was campaigning for a second term.

Black’s connection to Epstein’s legal team

Back in 2007, Black was a member of Epstein’s “all-star” criminal defense team that included top lawyers from South Florida, Washington and New York — including Kenneth Starr, Alan Dershowitz and Gerald Lefcourt. Black was going to be the lead attorney if Epstein had been charged on sex-abuse or -trafficking offenses and gone to trial in South Florida, according to Martin G. Weinberg, a Boston defense lawyer who was also on the team.

“Roy was selected by Epstein as his potential trial attorney,” Weinberg said, describing him as the “cornerstone” of the defense team. But he noted that while Black was involved in Epstein’s defense strategy, he never played the lead role as his trial attorney because the criminal case was resolved through a plea agreement in South Florida.

In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges of soliciting teenage girls at his Palm Beach mansion and served about one year in jail — after U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta chose not to present a 53-page indictment to the grand jury alleging the more serious federal charges of sex trafficking dozens of minor girls. If convicted, those charges would have carried potential punishment ranging from a mandatory 10 years in prison up to a life sentence.

Epstein’s victims called it a “sweetheart plea deal” that allowed him to go to work or do whatever he wanted for six days out of every week. The deal also shut down an FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes.

Black not part of Epstein plea deal hearing

Records show that Black was not among the lawyers who attended Epstein’s plea and sentencing hearing in June 2008 in West Palm Beach Circuit Court. Also, his signature was not among the lawyers who signed Epstein’s “non-prosecution agreement” with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami in September 2007.

Acosta’s non-prosecution agreement was initially kept secret from Epstein’s victims. The agreement also immunized several of his co-conspirators from federal prosecution.

The Herald’s investigation of the secretive plea deal, part of its “Perversion of Justice” series by Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown, led to Acosta resigning as U.S. Secretary of Labor in 2019 during the first Trump administration.

In July 2019, Epstein was indicted on the sex-trafficking charges by federal prosecutors in New York City. He hanged himself at 66 in his jail cell the following month before he could face trial, authorities said.

Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, was later indicted by New York prosecutors on federal charges of recruiting minor girls for the billionaire at his homes in Manhattan, Palm Beach, New Mexico and the Virgin Islands. Maxwell was found guilty in New York federal court of conspiracy and sex trafficking charges and sentenced to 20 years.

Bondi changes her story on Epstein list

The Trump administration’s Epstein narrative was bombarded with criticism from the president’s political base when Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News in February that she had a list of his clients “sitting on my desk right now to review” — but then changed her story.

This month, in a memo, Bondi’s Justice Department and the FBI said there was no list of clients whom Epstein may have procured for sex with the teenage girls. Authorities also stood by the official report that the accused pedophile died by suicide, and that the Justice Department had nothing more to report about the case.

After the memo was issued, Bondi corrected herself by saying she was referring to the general Epstein case files, not a client list, in her previous interview with Fox News, sparking even more attacks from many of Trump’s core supporters.

For years, they have theorized with no proof that Epstein’s wide circle of influential friends and acquaintances, including former Democratic President Bill Clinton, may have exploited the teenage girls recruited by the financier. But at the same time, their suspicions have also come back to haunt Trump, a major New York real estate developer who had known Epstein for years before entering politics.

Most Americans believe that the U.S. government is concealing information, including about who else may have been involved in his abuse of the young girls at Epstein’s residences, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

_____

©20205 Miami Herald. Visit at miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.