The Felon’s right for once: Jeffrey Epstein is dead

It was just this year that AG Pam Bondi announced the Big Reveal of all kinds of deep, dark secrets from the Epstein files. Only it never happened. And now the MAGA world wants to know why. Who is the Felon administration protecting? What are they hiding?

The Felon’s response is to insist it’s no big deal: “I don’t understand it — why they would be so interested. He’s dead for a long time. He was never a big factor in terms of life. I don’t understand what the interest or what the fascination is. I really don’t and the credible information has been given.” (the media would be screaming about senility if Biden had said anything that incomprehensible).

Unusually, his supporters are outraged at him and not buying it. As No More Mr. Nice Blog says, “Trump and his propagandists have sold the base on a narrative that’s at odds with the facts. The Epstein narrative is that there’s a global pedophile network that includes everyone MAGA hates, that’s much bigger than just the dozens of elitists on Epstein’s flight logs, and that’s central to the liberal/commie/globalist actions of the Deep State.” So far rather than give up the paranoia, they’re criticizing their glorious god-king.

Contrary to FOTUS, Epstein is a serious issue. As David Dayen says, he’s a textbook example of how the rich and the powerful live outside the law. For years he engaged in sex with underage girls (and of course, arranging the same for others) without repercussions; when he was busted and charged, Alex Acosta gave him a sweetheart deal, though one the Justice Department later decided was above board. Given how insanely generous it was, I’m not sure if this translates into “DOJ covers up for a fellow prosecutor” or “the outrageous thing is, DOJ thinks failing victims like this is acceptable.” It isn’t acceptable: as Fred Clark says, “It’s a perversion of justice — and such a perversion of justice is infuriating. “The dozens of teenage girls (that we know of) who were treated unjustly by Jeffrey Epstein were then denied legal justice by Acosta, Dershowitz, Starr, et. al. Their voices were silenced by the very legal system that was supposed to be acting on their behalf.”

For the record, the deal included state prostitution charges instead of federal, a 13 month sentence (he could have gotten life on federal charges), freedom to spend half the day at his office, no further investigation into Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking, and immunity for any co-conspirators. There was no attempt to notify the victims despite Florida law mandating victims hear when their case gets a plea bargain (county jail also didn’t allow work-release for sex offenders). The prosecutor on the case has denounced Acosta’s decisions and his account of events and so have others. Acosta’s defense is that he was really, really concerned about the hardship of forcing the girls to testify … but he didn’t give them the choice.

Did Acosta get a payment under the table? Or was it simply that he decided a long hard legal fight he might lose was not good for his career — er, an efficient use of resources, how did I get that wrong? Did some of Epstein’s co-conspirators have enough clout to shut things down? I’m sure it didn’t help that the victims were nobodies and that our justice system has a long history of ignoring rape victims.

Either way, it’s a horror story. One of the hardest things to do is to hold the rich and the powerful accountable for actions that would get a nobody jailed — to make wickedness unsafe in any station, in the words of Cato’s Letter. Epstein’s crimes and his hundreds of victims show why.