NEW YORK—Saying claims against the billionaire hedge fund manager were a calculated hit job, Jeffrey Epstein’s defense team declared Thursday that those who have accused him of sexually assaulting underage girls are merely seeking to tarnish the career of a talented child molester. “My client is one of the greatest pedophiles of all time, and these women are trying to take a wrecking ball to his legacy,” said attorney Reid Weingarten, who claimed that the testimonies made against Epstein by dozens of women, many of them underage at the time of their assault, were nothing more than an attempt to undermine the hard-working assailant’s contributions to the craft of child molestation. “Jeffrey built a sterling reputation for himself as a statutory rapist and sex trafficker, always using his connections to a vast network of powerful people to hide his crimes. Now his accusers want to take that away from him. They just can’t stand the fact that he’s up there with [convicted serial rapist Jerry] Sandusky as a true master of child sex abuse.” Weingarten went on to add that the accusers were most likely failed child molesters themselves who were just jealous of Epstein’s world-class achievements as a sexual predator.