Bill and Hillary Clinton had a choice: face criminal contempt charges or come clean about their friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. After months of resisting, the former president and his wife have now agreed to testify before the House. Clinton will be the first former president to appear before Congress since 1983, when Gerald Ford discussed bicentenary celebrations for the enactment of the Constitution. An appearance of this gravity, however, is unprecedented; it may well mark the start of a true Epstein reckoning in America.
The Epstein scandal has become a strange monster, hell-bent on devouring the old elite
In typical Clintonian style, the couple presented their initial refusal as a principled stand. Last month, they sent a gold-embossed letter to House Oversight Committee chairman James R. Comer which listed the supposed crimes of the Trump administration: January 6ers pardoned, deportations without due process, ICE agents killing protesters. “Every person has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country,” they wrote. “For us, now is that time.” And so, nobly, they refused once again to explain to the American people why Bill is in the Epstein files alongside a young woman in a hot tub. Grandstanding over the ills of the Trump presidency was a blatant attempt to use partisanship to avoid scrutiny.
Democrats on the Oversight Committee clearly felt the same way. Despite minority leader Hakeem Jeffries’s best efforts, rank-and-file Democrats decided enough was indeed enough: they voted to pressure the Clintons to testify rather than anger their midterm voters. Siding with the Republicans was considered less toxic than appearing to protect an Epstein associate, even one who was once America’s commander-in-chief.
The Epstein scandal has become a strange monster, hell-bent on devouring the old elite. The files expose what many suspect but could never confirm: that power and money are the ultimate measure for those who felt they ran the world in the 1990s and 2000s, and that the prospect of an invitation to the Caribbean outweighed the horror of child sex abuse. Despite what Epstein’s circle now say in public, many appear to have been driven by hedonistic nihilism. We see Epstein claiming he had helped Bill Gates, then the world’s second richest man, acquire drugs to deal with a sexually transmitted disease he contracted from a Russian girl (allegations Gates hotly denies).
This is precisely the kind of collusion that first brought Donald Trump to power. Voters could sense there was something crooked in their elites and wanted to put a stop to it. That Trump himself is implicated in the Epstein affair complicates matters. The MAGA coalition is splintering, in part, because the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie believe the President is trying to cover up his involvement.
Epstein becomes, then, something of a Rorschach test: different people see different conspiracies. Proponents of QAnon find the files a source of vindication. One email reads: “Jeffrey says he wants to go out to a pizza place with you! (He did not mention a particular pizza place, but he knows you are in the know on this ;).” Pizza is mentioned 867 times in the archive, and many of the instances are no doubt innocent. But there is occasionally a hint of menace. And there are clear references to pizza parties involving young women. This is manna for those who have long argued that “pizza” was code for “underage girl” among the pedophile elites.
Each release of documents brings with it further information, yet the truth of the affair remains elusive. It doesn’t help that the whole process has been haphazard: documents dumped on the public en masse yet in batches, the evidence then refracted through frothy political arguments and weird online discourse. Documents describing a gruesome encounter involving Trump spread rapidly online, only to mysteriously disappear from the government’s website before reappearing once again. It was clear, however, these particular allegations were merely registered by investigators who were compelled to record all claims related to Epstein, however fanciful. But that does little to assuage those who have already made their minds up. When it comes to Epstein, sunlight is no longer a disinfectant. The more we see, the less we seem to know.
The Justice Department claims these 3.5 million documents will be the final tranche released. Some wonder whether more damaging information is being withheld by Attorney General Pam Bondi. Whether or not that’s the case, the Democrats will surely say so when they eventually reclaim the White House. This is the new world we inhabit: the Epstein story helps destroy what few vestiges of trust in authority remain. And the absence of authority then exacerbates the same sense of mistrust.
Around 500 lawyers sifted through the documents, but they were nothing compared to the legion of amateur sleuths poring over messages and photos. An air of sordid black humor has descended on the entire affair. Elon Musk seems to misunderstand Epstein’s coded references to sex parties. The former prince, Andrew, is pictured on all fours over a woman, looking bleary-eyed. Lord Mandelson, Britain’s former ambassador to the US, is photographed standing in tight white underwear. Less amusingly, naked photos of young women, potentially even children, were accidentally released.
So far, it is mostly British figures who have suffered over their associations with Epstein. Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has lost his titles, Mandelson has been fired as ambassador and forced to stand down from the House of Lords. The American aspects of the scandal may take longer to play out. At least, in this strange era where nothing quite makes sense, the prospect of Bill Clinton denying sexual liaisons is reassuringly retro.
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