Abcarian: Epstein files far from old news
I’m not saying definitively that going to war against Iran when there was no imminent threat is President Donald Trump’s way of distracting attention from the case of Jeffrey Epstein and his voluminous, sordid, incriminating files.
Then again, I’m not not saying it.
We certainly know that Trump has mused in the past about invading Iran as a plausible response by an American president to his own domestic troubles.
“Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin,” Trump tweeted on Oct. 9, 2012, during President Obama’s reelection campaign, “watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.”
As different members of the administration and their allies give shifting versions of why Trump moved against Iran now, the question arises: Has the president achieved his presumed objective of knocking the Epstein files off the front page?
Not exactly.
They may have moved below the fold, as we say in the newspaper biz, but the Epstein scandal is alive and well, jamming the courts, occupying congressional committees, sparking investigations in at least eight countries and toppling various “important” people.
The Epstein case has spawned a genre of angles: How he paid doctors to provide medical services to victims, how university officials and scientists have been stung by associations with him, the bankers who enabled him, the summer music camp where he preyed on victims.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian tentatively approved a $35 million settlement for a lawsuit that was brought by survivors against Epstein’s lawyer Darren Indyke and his accountant Richard Kahn, co-executors of Epstein’s estate.
While only two people were ever charged criminally in America — Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell — dozens of civil cases have been brought in connection with the financier’s decadeslong exploitation of young women and girls. The total of various settlements is so far estimated at a whopping $500 million.
On Feb. 24, NPR reported that 65,000 pages of Epstein files, originally released as part of the 6 million-page dump by the Justice Department, had somehow disappeared from the publicly available documents.
Information in some of those files relate to unverified allegations reported by a woman to the FBI that Trump sexually abused her and physically assaulted her in 1983 when she was a minor. Trump has vigorously disputed the claims.
Meanwhile, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the couple Republicans love to hate, were dragged before the House Oversight Committee for hourslong depositions on separate days. They had asked for public hearings and were refused.
Why has the committee not subpoenaed first lady Melania Trump, a onetime model from Eastern Europe who knew Epstein and was friendly with Maxwell?
On Wednesday, the Oversight Committee voted to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi will testify about why it has taken so long to release the Epstein files.
The committee also passed a motion demanding the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights release information about all settlements of taxpayer money paid to victims of sexual misconduct by members of Congress.
Then on Thursday, Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse gave a 48-minute speech on the Senate floor examining Epstein’s tangled webs of connection to Russian government officials and oligarchs, his friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell, whose father Robert was believed to be a political and intelligence asset for the Soviet Union, and of course with Trump.
Could this all have some bearing, Whitehouse wondered, on what he described as Trump’s incomprehensibly accommodating relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose name appears nearly 1,000 times in the Epstein files?
As with our many Middle East misadventures, for the Epstein files there really is no end in sight.
DOCUMENTED REFERENCES
Exploring Documented Records
Public interest in the Epstein case continues not only because of court proceedings and testimonies, but also due to the growing body of documented records that help researchers and readers understand the broader context. Beyond legal files and media reports, some independent projects have organized publicly available data connected to Epstein’s activities.
One example is a structured archive of documented Amazon order records, where purchases are cataloged with dates and product details. While individual items do not prove wrongdoing on their own, examining documented information alongside established facts helps paint a clearer picture of the environment and circumstances surrounding the case.
Browse the structured archive of documented order records
For readers looking to review primary-source style data rather than interpretations, exploring compiled records can provide additional context to the broader discussion.
