I hope Jeffrey Epstein sings like a bird.
The wealthy and well-connected financier and registered sex offender was arrested this week in New York on accusations of child sex trafficking. He just may bring a lot of bad men – and a few bad women – down with him.
Epstein allegedly groomed and recruited dozens of underage girls, many of them vulnerable runaways, for sex with him and his friends. Despite being caught by authorities, Epstein has largely evaded serious punishment. Thanks to heroic reporting by Julie K Brown at the Miami Herald, Americans learned that back in 2008, Epstein was given an exceptionally favorable plea deal by then-prosecutor Alex Acosta – now Trump’s secretary of labor. The deal was shamefully hidden from Epstein’s victims, and while it forced Epstein to register as a sex offender, it allowed him near-total freedom for the 13 months he was technically in jail – he was allowed to leave the facility to work in his luxurious private office instead of serving life in prison.
It’s unclear why Epstein was given such favorable treatment. But given who his friends are, speculation has run rampant that his powerful connections (and the potential wrongdoings of other powerful men) may have had a hand in keeping him in relative freedom.
Epstein’s friends and contacts include President Donald Trump, President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and high-powered attorney Alan Dershowitz, among many others. In 2002, Trump characterized Epstein as a “terrific guy” who enjoyed the company of girls “on the younger side.”
In the immediate aftermath of Epstein’s arrest, Twitter exploded with political gotchas. On the right, it’s near-gospel that President Bill Clinton and Epstein are jet-setting pals, and that Clinton is at best complicit and at worst a participant in Epstein’s sex crimes. (We know Clinton used Epstein’s private jet for work related to the Clinton Foundation; according to Clinton, they were always accompanied by Secret Service agents or Clinton Foundation staff.)
On the left, Trump opponents wonder if the president was ever a participant in Epstein’s sexual crimes. Trump was at one point accused by a young woman of raping her at Epstein’s New York home when she was 13; the lawsuit in which those accusations were made was withdrawn by the accuser. We also know that Trump and Epstein socialized, that Trump’s various phone numbers were written in Epstein’s notorious little black book, and that Epstein was once asked whether he had ever been around Trump and underage girls – and he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
This is not a story in which anyone should find satisfaction. Dozens of vulnerable girls were allegedly sexually exploited and abused by Jeffrey Epstein. A great many adults, who should have done the right thing and stood up for these children, chose to look the other way. A few may have even participated in exploitation and rape.
“I hope Jeffrey Epstein sings like a bird. And if some Democrats go down, so be it
Holding people accountable for abusing girls should be nonpartisan. Sadly, in the Trump era of lowered expectations, we can’t count on that”