The Insane Multitude of Misconceptions About the Epstein Case

There’s an absolutely enormous amount of material in the public record related to the matter of Jeffrey Epstein.

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Quantifying the total number of court records produced throughout 15+ years of voluminous civil and criminal action might not even be mathematically possible, but a dedicated connoisseur could probably devote the next six months to reading every page, and still be far from the finish line. If you really want, you can study the lengthy reports on Epstein’s ties with Harvard and MIT, or an extensive DOJ Inspector General report on Epstein’s death in federal custody. Questions as to the sources of Epstein’s wealth are fair enough, but most of the people who menacingly ask such questions don’t appear to have ever bothered reading the copious information that’s already accessible to anyone with an internet connection. There’s a report on billionaire Leon Black’s connections to Epstein that one may view on the SEC website. Likewise, one can also easily read a report on Epstein’s financial relationship with billionaire Leslie Wexner. Do these reports necessarily contain the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Of course not. Should we assume they are absolutely 100% comprehensive, and reflect every possible detail that could ever be discovered? No, that’d be silly. But so many of those who clamor the loudest for Epstein disclosure seem totally uninterested in evaluating what’s already been disclosed. They’d rather sit around listening to three-hour podcasts with failed comedians pulling stuff out of their ass.

If there is one report I would most implore people to read, it would be the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility report, published November 2020. I admit I hadn’t read this in full until the epic Summer of Epstein meltdown these past few weeks. So many findings in the report are absolutely incredible in how manifestly they contradict central tenets of the dogma people have constructed around Epstein. When the report was first published, just after the 2020 presidential election, all the ensuing media headlines were practically identical:

I’m willing to bet that not a single one of these journalists or headline-writers read the entire 348 page report before blasting out their bite-sized summations, which of course were largely framed to cast maximum aspersion on Trump, whose first-term Labor Secretary, Alex Acosta, was deemed to have shown “poor judgment” in his handling of Epstein’s federal plea agreement in 2007-2008, when Acosta was the US Attorney in South Florida.

It’s true that the report does find Acosta responsible for “poor judgment” stemming from his determination that the federal interest in the Epstein matter could be satisfied by a Non-Prosecution Agreement, whereby Epstein would plead guilty to two state-level prostitution charges, serve a prison sentence, register as a sex offender, and agree to a mechanism for providing monetary damages to a certain class of individuals designated by the government as “victims.” The report faults Acosta for being excessively concerned about questions of federalism (given that the Epstein prosecution originated locally in Palm Beach, creating various arcane jurisdictional issues) and structuring the agreement in such a way that caused inadequate oversight of Epstein’s sentence, which was deferred to under-resourced state authorities in Florida.

At the same time, Acosta is absolved of any “improper” conduct because investigators conclude “the decision to pursue a pre-charge resolution was based on various case-specific legal and factual considerations.” These “factual considerations” represent perhaps the biggest gaping hole in the public understanding of the Epstein saga. If the entire US population were made to sit through a compulsory recitation of these “factual considerations,” attitudes would change dramatically, overnight.

While the default popular supposition, informed by lazy and hysterical media narratives, is that Acosta did not more aggressively prosecute Epstein because he was swooned by Epstein’s wealth and status, intimidated by Epstein’s purported ties to “intelligence,” or for other similarly nefarious reasons, the more banal but reality-based explanation is that prosecutors perceived massive legal and evidentiary obstacles to actually convicting Epstein at trial. “You had a tranche of witnesses who were not going to be reliable,” one of the prosecutors, Jeffery Sloman, explained. “You had a tranche [of] witnesses who were going to be severely impeached. People who loved Jeffrey Epstein who thought he was a Svengali . . . who were going to say I told him I was 18 years old.” Even the female prosecutor in Acosta’s office who lobbied most aggressively to indict Epstein, Marie Villafaña, told OPR investigators that some of the purported Epstein “victims” she identified “wanted him not to be prosecuted at all.” Another seemingly daunting evidentiary hurdle was that some of the government-designated “victims” had “made statements exonerating Epstein.”

Amazingly, some of these “victims” were actually collaborating with Epstein against the government by passing information to Epstein’s attorneys in hopes of stifling prosecutorial action. One “victim” had explained to the FBI that she “did not in any manner view herself as a victim,” but still received a “victim notification letter” from the DOJ.

The “serious evidentiary challenges” documented in the 2020 OPR report were further illuminated when in July 2024, long-awaited records were unsealed from the Palm Beach District Attorney’s original investigation of Epstein. Here is the lead detective on that case, Joe Racary, answering questions before the Grand Jury on July 19, 2006:

Grand Juries can famously “indict a ham sandwich” if prosecutors really want them to, but in the Palm Beach case, grand jurors were told that some witnesses and/or “victims” were refusing to talk to police, and saying things like “I love Jeffrey, I’m not testifying against him.”

One witness and/or “victim” indicated that she was more harmed and embarrassed by the prosecution itself than by her interactions with Epstein — maintaining that her life was going well until she’d received a Grand Jury subpoena two days earlier. She said she would be extremely embarrassed to have to publicly testify about her dealings with Epstein, which included receiving cash for sexualized massages:

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