By Douglas V. Gibbs
As the Epstein Files continue to be released, a few truths are beginning to become known. Jeffrey Epstein didn’t have much education or a strong business background, yet rose to become a wealthy person through shady “financier” dealings. He operated a sophisticated sex trafficking and abuse ring, yet aside from Ghislaine Maxwell, nobody seems to know anything about how he ran it and who was a part of it. Through his connections among wealthy elites from around the world he was able to prey on underage girls for years, using properties in Palm Beach, New Mexico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Paris for his criminal locations.
The case regarding Epstein goes way beyond the operations of a lone man and his crimes. The whole thing is about a systemic failure of the justice system and the alleged complicity of a powerful network of individuals. Judges looked the other way and officials took actions that circumstantially looks like they were complicit as Epstein recruited and sexually abused an unknown number of minor girls. He created a web of exploitation that included using girls to help him recruit other victims, and a payment system that compensated girls for things that included massages that turned sexual.
In 2008, despite a mountain of evidence from a federal investigation, Epstein received a non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Florida. After pleading guilty to a single count of soliciting prostitution from a minor, he was sentenced to a mere 18 months in a county jail. The deal granted him and any potential co-conspirators immunity from federal prosecution. While the experts call it a monumental failure of justice, the average onlooker comes to one simple conclusion: who was it inside the system that had enough levers to pull to protect him, and ultimately to hide and bury the deep dark secrets surrounding the man?
In 2019, after years of investigative journalism by a number of outlets, the 2008 deal was brought to light, so federal prosecutors reopened the case. Epstein was arrested in July of 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges, and a month later was found dead in his jail cell. While the experts called it a suicide, too many questions remained regarding how he died. Recent revelations are revealing a number of things that makes one consider that he may have been murdered inside his jail cell.
Over the years the massive trove of documents that have accumulated regarding Jeffrey Epstein have come to be known as the “Epstein Files.” The files largely regard a defamation lawsuit brought by one of his prominent victims, Virginia Giuffre, against Epstein’s longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell. The files, along with other court documents and flight logs, have been revealing a view into Epstein’s operation that seems to be providing more questions than answers.
In the documents a number of high profile individuals – politicians, business leaders, academics and royalty – are named as associating with Epstein. While being mentioned in the files does not necessarily serve as proof of any wrongdoing, the list of people named definitely illustrates the kind of powerful elite circles Epstein moved in and used for protection and legitimacy.
The Epstein Files reveals Ghislaine Maxwell’s role in Epstein’s operations, and even cement her role as his indispensable partner. She was his girlfriend, and an active participant in the recruitment, grooming, and abuse of victims. In 2021, she was convicted on federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy and is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.
According to victim testimony inside the documents girls were trafficked not only to Epstein, but also to his powerful friends, revealing the abuse was widespread and that it was a service he provided to his network. Those who could be considered enablers include a circle of staff, recruiters, and financial professionals – individuals who helped facilitate the abuse and keep the operation running.
The Epstein case has emerged as a stark example of how wealth and power can be, and has been, used to evade justice. It highlights how the sickness of a dark world goes so deep that our legal and social institutions are somehow filled with people who are either complicit or a part of a failing system that could be interpreted as “looking the other way.” The “predator” we know as Jeffrey Epstein operated for decades without even a worry because he was not only ignored by the people who should have been investigating him, but he was assisted by inside people along the way. Yet, no matter how massive his network was, nobody knows details or have come forward to break the case wide open. It’s a chilling reminder that there are some people who are so rich and connected that they use the system knowing that they will be treated differently because of their position in society.
The most sickening part of the whole thing is not only that the truth seems to be unable to completely reveal itself, but that the very people who may be the most guilty are the same ones trying to pin the Epstein world on President Donald Trump. Many of those people are allegedly progressive leftist Democrats, and they and their left-wing allies, for political reasons that surround their hatred of Trump, are doing all they can to plant seeds to make the public believe that Trump was somehow involved with Epstein, or knew about the man’s sick operation. Before she died, victim Virginia Giuffre testified that Trump was not a part of Epstein’s world. Ghislaine Maxwell has also testified that Trump was not a part of the inner-circle, and only knew Epstein because they moved around in a few of the same circles. At one point, Donald Trump kicked Jeffry Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club, a story supported by multiple accounts. Trump’s action followed an incident where Epstein harassed the teenage daughter of a Mar-a-Lago member at the club’s pool in either mid-2006 or late 2007 (the exact date has been unclear), before Epstein’s 2008 “sweetheart deal” that led to federal prosecutors backing off, and Epstein’s arrest in 2019 (which, by the way, happened during Trump’s presidency). Trump’s action to kick Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago includes a comment by Trump that Epstein was “being a creep.” One file documents Trump telling Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter in 2019 that “people in New York knew he [Epstein] was disgusting” and that Ghislaine Maxwell was “evil” and that police should “focus on her.”
The Democrats, however, are persistent. Their hatred of Trump reaches beyond reason. So, even though every indication reveals that Trump had little to do with Epstein, and that Trump even kicked the man out of Mar-a-Lago and left instructions that if Epstein showed up at the gates of Mar-a-Lago, he was to be turned away immediately, they continue to insist that Trump was somehow on the inside of Epstein’s sick dark world. I’ve heard a number of leftist media people and politicians call Trump a “pedo,” and images from the 1990s and early 2000s of Trump and Epstein at the same parties and events keep circulating the internet. They want desperately for voters to believe there is some kind of connection because they know they can’t win in the arena of ideas, and the election-cheat they tend to rely on is being tainted by election integrity efforts, so they have to continue with their effort to besmirch Trump’s name.
Which brings me to the point of this article. My wife told me she keeps seeing images of Trump and Epstein together on social media. “Is there any truth to them?” she asked me.
When we lived in Southern California, I was very involved politically. I am in a number of pictures taken with people I don’t necessarily agree with politically, some of them who I thought were allies at the time. I knew them, I bumped into them at gatherings and political meetings, but that does not necessarily mean that they were my allies or that I was “buddies” with them. After explaining this to my wife, it helped her understand the images that have emerged of Trump in the same room as Epstein. As a businessman, Trump’s business included seeking investors for his projects. Epstein, operating as an alleged financier, moved in the same circles as the folks with position and money that Trump was around. They were bound to be in the same room as each other on a number of occasions. But, as we should very well know if we are to use our logic and reasoning skills, proximity does not always indicate complicity.
They are just pictures.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
