"The release of the Epstein files-the slow-drip revelations of a web of privileged (mostly) men trading gifts, access, favors, and sickening child predation as casually as Pokémon cards-has been deliberately parsed out through 2026 as to both be buried itself and bury other horrific news coming out of the Trump administration. But this misses a critical point: The Epstein file dump is not simply playing out as a backdrop against which other acts of American lawlessness are occurring."
"So it follows that Attorney General Pam Bondi testifying blithely before a congressional hearing on Wednesday, as Jeffrey Epstein's survivors sat behind her, unacknowledged and irrelevant to her purposes, is the template for that messaging: Blond woman who knows she must seek and maintain protection from this administration's simulacrum of justice crows about the Dow Jones for the cameras, because she understands that if she doesn't, she will be left behind, asking to be respected, like the masses of women behind her."
"And it is equally true that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick could bring his children and their nannies to a bespoke lunch on Epstein's island in 2012, long after he allegedly broke off contact with the sex predator, precisely because Lutnick's children and their nannies were not the types of children or women who would be abandoned there to be raped and threatened."
Epstein file disclosures reveal a network of privileged men trading gifts, access, favors, and child predation, released selectively through 2026 to bury and displace other terrible news. The Epstein story operates as both a template and proof text for misconduct across multiple arenas: state politics, detention centers, congressional retaliation, crypto scams, and public-health failures. The pattern presents a road map for an administration that behaves as if wealth and fame confer immunity from law. Elite actions and public messaging model acceptance of that perceived immunity and marginalize survivors and vulnerable people.
Read at Slate Magazine
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