July 18, 2025
Partisan politics is creating a travesty of justice.
The contours of the continuing Jeffrey Epstein scandal are outlined via two suicides: one well-known, and one fairly difficult to understand—however the actual ethical middle of the talk. Epstein’s obvious suicide in jail in 2019 is route a big explanation why his scandalous existence is still the topic of scorching political debate. Given all of the mysterious main points that encompass this match (the falsified data, the altered video tapes purporting to turn no person entered his cellular, and the disputed post-mortem effects), many of us fairly refuse to just accept the respectable verdict, lately reaffirmed via Donald Trump’s management, that Epstein killed himself.
However Epstein’s demise is in the end a forensic topic, one in every of settling the factual query of homicide or suicide. A lot more morally bother was once an match that gained a long way much less press consideration: the suicide previous this yr of Virginia Giuffre at age 41. In 2000, when she was once 17 years previous and dealing as spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago (Donald Trump’s lodge), Giuffre was once recruited and groomed via Ghislaine Maxwell to be a part of Epstein’s sexual entourage. Epstein and Maxwell recruited no longer simply Giuffre however numerous different youngsters and younger teenagers. Giuffre was once a central determine within the prison case in opposition to Epstein in 2008 (which ended with a sweetheart non-prosecution settlement), the 2009 sufferers’ swimsuit that saved the case alive, and the second one prison case in opposition to Epstein in 2019. Giuffre additionally accused Prince Andrew of the UK of abusing her, which ended within the prince paying a agreement despite the fact that Andrew continues to disclaim the fees.
As Giuffre regularly insisted, her tale was once a long way from distinctive. The Epstein intercourse ring victimized numerous youngsters and younger teenagers. One Justice Division memo estimates there have been greater than one thousand sufferers.
Even though Giuffre was once exceptionally courageous in status as much as Epstein and different males who assaulted her, the trauma she skilled without a doubt blighted her in ways in which defy comprehension. Her suicide is itself a testomony to why the Epstein case mattered. Giuffre’s tale is soul-crushing—and it came about loads of occasions in more than a few techniques to different ladies.
One putting facet of the Epstein case is that a very powerful folks—sufferers equivalent to Giuffre—are probably the most temporarily forgotten. Even because the case now dominates political discourse, the focal point has been no longer at the crimes dedicated however the a lot more trivial topic of the partisan political fallout and the more than a few methods politicians are adopting to take advantage of the talk.
If the Epstein case has turn into a ghastly circus, a lot of the blame belongs to that the majority sinister of ringmasters, Donald Trump. On account of his longstanding ties to Epstein, relationship again to the Eighties, Trump himself was once now and again wary in regards to the case—despite the fact that he did speculate in 2019 that Epstein’s demise was once no longer a suicide. Trump’s private closeness to Epstein is a sound topic for investigation. On Thursday, The Wall Boulevard Magazine reported that during 2003 Trump despatched Epstein a “bawdy” letter as a part of a fiftieth birthday party. In that letter Trump mirrored “we’ve sure issues in not unusual, Jeffrey.”
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However Trump rode to political energy as an avatar of anti-system anger, which intended raising conspiratorial suspicions that had been wholly absurd (QAnon and Pizzagate) in addition to the ones with extra grounding actually (the peerlessly correct trust that the CIA has no longer been forthright about what it is aware of referring to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and the numerous unresolved questions in regards to the Epstein case). Definitely many primary figures in Trump’s circle—starting from Vice President JD Vance to Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi to FBI Director Kash Patel—had been greater than keen to air the extra lurid Epstein conspiracy theories.
Now that the Trump White Space desires to transport on from the Epstein scandal and claim it a closed case, the president is discovering he’s dealing with an intense backlash from his personal base. This could be noticed as one of those poetic justice: Dr. Frankenstein being attacked via the very monster he created. On Fact Social on Wednesday, Trump even explicitly lambasted his supporters, writing, “Their new SCAM is what we can ceaselessly name the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have purchased into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker.”
But when Trump merits the backlash for his cynical conspiracy mongering, elite Democrats additionally deserve complaint for no longer taking the Epstein topic critically till they noticed political benefit in it. The longstanding line of the Democratic birthday celebration management has been the similar as Trump’s present place: there may be not anything to peer right here, other people, so transfer alongside. In 2019, the DNC attacked Trump guide Kellyanne Conway for protecting “Trump retweeting baseless conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein’s demise.” On Thursday, former Space Majority Chief Nancy Pelosi described the Epstein case as a “distraction” from the intense debate about Trump’s finances.
Responding to Pelosi’s feedback, former Barack Obama guide Tommy Vietor tweeted,
“The Epstein information debacle is NOT a distraction. It moves on the middle of Trump’s attraction, which is that he operates outdoor of a components that MAGA desires to burn down. He’s their hero with gas and a torch. If Trump seems like he’s overlaying up for the elites, he’s screwed.” It’s arduous to not consider that Pelosi’s peculiar remark was once motivated via the truth that some best Democrats, together with former president Invoice Clinton, belonged to Epstein’s social circle. As Pelosi’s personal daughter Christine Pelosi wrote in 2019, “a few of our faves are implicated.”
With polling appearing Trump dealing with a public backlash from even his personal supporters on his dealing with of the Epstein case, Democrats are turning into extra vocal at the factor. However right here once more, we see a cynical perspective at play. On Wednesday, Politico reported:
Interviews with a dozen Democratic elected officers, strategists and aides solid the talk as useful no longer most effective in dividing Trump’s base but in addition illustrating the president’s flip-flopping dispositions, even on his core marketing campaign problems…. However the opening is also short-lived. Democratic strategists stated they don’t be expecting Epstein-related conspiracies to turn up of their TV advertisements or dominate the birthday celebration’s midterm messaging, with the GOP megabill prone to take middle level.
It’s arduous to not be sickened via the concept that the Epstein case must most effective be used as fodder for brief lived polling achieve. As soon as once more, the sufferers had been sidelined from the tale.
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One one that hasn’t ever forgotten the sufferers is Miami Usher in journalist Julie Okay. Brown, whose 2019 reporting at the unique prison case reopened the scandal and ended in Epstein’s arrest. In her reporting, Brown highlighted the voices of sufferers equivalent to Virginia Giuffre.
In The Lever podcast on Wednesday, Brown spoke eloquently of the human injury Epstein and his cronies did—in addition to the numerous unresolved questions surrounding the case. Brown stated, “they’re completely hiding one thing. What they’re hiding? We don’t know.”
Except the questions revolving round Epstein’s demise, there may be the nonetheless unresolved topic of his wealth. How did a faculty dropout who taught at a non-public college turn into so well to do and accumulate round himself a community of the richest males on the earth? As Brown notes, “there’s most probably much more that we don’t find out about Jeffrey Epstein and what he was once doing, particularly when it issues his cash… Hournalism 101 is practice the cash and it must even be Prosecutorial 101.”
Thankfully, no longer each and every political determine has handled the Epstein case cynically. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden has been pushing precisely the type of investigation into Epstein’s price range that Brown requires.
On Thursday, The New York Occasions reported that Wyden:
has been digging into Mr. Epstein’s monetary community for the previous 3 years. Some contributors of his team of workers have seen confidential information that make clear the immense sums of cash that, they are saying, Mr. Epstein moved during the banking components to gasoline his huge sex-trafficking community.
Particularly, filings via 4 large banks flagged greater than $1.5 billion in transactions — together with 1000’s of cord transfers for the acquisition and sale of paintings for wealthy buddies, charges paid to Mr. Epstein via well to do folks, and bills to a lot of ladies, the senator’s administrative center discovered. The filings got here after Mr. Epstein was once arrested in 2019 on federal intercourse trafficking fees.
On Tuesday, California congressman Ted Lieu advised reporters that “That is the case of the tough protective the tough.” This will get to the center of the political controversy. Past partisan wrangling, the Epstein case is set whether or not the ultra-wealthy experience absolute impunity or whether or not they may be able to be held responsible via the regulation.
Virginia Giuffre in her quick existence by no means gained the justice she deserved. The one solution to honor her reminiscence is to push for responsibility and transparency within the Epstein case.
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Jeet Heer 
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