It's Not About Jeffrey Epstein
It's about national defense, trust in government, the exploitation of minors, and the abuse of the U.S. legal system by the rich and powerful.
President Donald J. Trump expressed bewilderment on Tuesday about why people are still talking about billionaire pedophile and alleged Israeli intelligence agent Jeffrey Epstein.
The FBI and the U.S. Dept. of Justice this week closed the case on Epstein, whom the FBI calculates to have harmed more than a thousand victims.
I’ve followed the Epstein case since the Miami Herald’s 2019 exposé on a secret plea deal that resulted in his 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute.
I concluded long ago that the Epstein case represents the most shocking abuse of the legal process in modern history.
Plea Deal
Epstein, who had sexual encounters with at least 40 underage girls at his Palm Beach mansion, faced a potential life sentence in prison.
Instead, Miami’s U.S. Attorney, Alexander Acosta, appointed by former GOP Pres. George W. Bush, infamously, agreed to a plea deal in which Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in Palm Beach County’s jail (he only served 13 months). The agreement included work release, allowing him to leave the jail for up to 12 hours a day, six days a week.
As part of the deal, Acosta agreed not to pursue sex trafficking or other charges against Epstein and extended immunity to Epstein’s potential co-conspirators.
The plea deal was kept under seal, but details emerged through lawsuits and the Miami Herald’s series, Perversion of Justice. In 2019, a federal judge ruled Acosta’s office violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA) by failing to adequately notify Epstein’s victims about the plea deal.
This represents the corruption of the U.S. legal system by the rich and powerful, but that’s just the beginning.
By then, Acosta had been named U.S. Labor Secretary by Trump. He was forced to resign.
Public outrage fueled a new federal investigation, which led to new charges against Epstein on July 8, 2019, for sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking in New York and Florida. He was declared to have committed suicide in a high-security New York City jail on August 10, 2019, though some reject that conclusion.
Blaming Little Girls
Twenty years ago, federal prosecutions for sex trafficking and other federal sex offenses accounted for about 2.5% of the total federal caseload. The Epstein case demonstrates why.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2024 signed a law in 2024 that enabled the release of 176 pages of 2008 grand jury testimony in Epstein’s case after 16 years under seal. Outrageously, federal prosecutors blamed Epstein’s victims, including a 14-year-old ninth grader who lived with her dad and spent her free time at the local shopping mall.
Prosecutor Lanna Belohlave in questioning the then-16-year-old girl, asked, “You aware that you committed a crime?” The girl replied: “I didn’t know it was a crime when I was doing it… I guess it’s prostitution or something like that.”
In fact and law, a minor cannot commit the crime of prostitution because she is legally unable to consent to sexual activity. Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, minors involved in commercial sex acts are victims of trafficking.
It appeared that many in the grand jury room did not empathize with the underage sexual abuse and trafficking victims.
Virginia Giuffre signed a 2015 affidavit stating that Epstein directed her to have sex with his attorney, Alan Dershowitz, beginning when she was 16 years old, two years below the age of consent. Dershowitz sued Giuffre for defamation, which is distressing at best and a form of protracted torture at worst. She released a statement in 2022 stating that she “may have made a mistake,” and Dershowitz dropped the lawsuit.
Giuffre allegedly committed suicide at her home in Australia on April 25, 2025. Many factors could have contributed to her alleged suicide, but surely one was the trauma she endured for years as a girl who was trafficked to rich and powerful men.
National Security Implications
The Epstein case is important for many reasons, but maybe the most important reason involves national security.
In 2018, Acosta said he was instructed to go easy on Epstein because Epstein “belonged to intelligence” and was told “to leave it alone.”
A 2019 book, Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales, by three investigative journalists, quotes former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe as stating Epstein was an Israeli spy running a classic “honey-trap” operation to blackmail prominent figures.
“[Epstein] was taking photos of politicians [engaging in sexual activity with] fourteen-year-old girls — if you want to get it straight,” Ben-Menashe said.
The possibility that a foreign state conducted a blackmail operation in the U.S. is worthy of investigation.
Could U.S. politicians have been compromised by Epstein’s sex trafficking activities? Have compromised politicians voted to send taxpayer dollars to Israel to support its economy, bomb its neighbors, and conduct ethnic cleansing / genocide in Gaza? If Israel conducted a blackmail operation in the U.S., it would constitute a breach of U.S. sovereignty.
Epstein fraternized with former President Bill Clinton, billionaire Bill Gates, Prince Andrew of Great Britain, former Harvard President Larry Summers, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, etc.
In June, Elon Musk claimed Trump is in the Epstein files, prompting Epstein’s former lawyer, David Schoen, to post Epstein “had no information to hurt President Trump.”
Trump says he ended the relationship with Epstein around 2004 due to a dispute over a real estate deal. He also banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago in 2006 after Epstein allegedly made improper advances to a club member’s teenage daughter.
On Tuesday, Trump said, “We are not talking about Epstein anymore!”
That is wishful thinking.
By mid-afternoon, 2.04 million posts were logged on X about Epstein, and the vast majority were critical of Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and Assistant Director Don Bongino.
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA, tweeted: “No one believes there is not a client list.”
Podcaster Joe Rogan said: “Yeah, I think it’s pretty safe to say people aren’t buying the Epstein file explanation. Feels like the biggest open secret in the world, and no one is giving real answers.”
“Government is deeply broken,” tweeted Musk.