My Déjà vu From The Epstein Case
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/25/nx-s1-5478620/jeffrey-epstein-crimes-timeline-legal-case
I have to confess that I never followed the details of the Jeffrey Epstein case that stretches back to 2002. I knew he had been accused of abusing women, sex trafficking, and prostitution, that he was convicted of some of these offenses, and that he had many rich and powerful friends. The only piquing of my interest came during the final episodes of the Paramount television series The Good Fight, when a certain part of his post-mortem anatomy became the center of a plot line.
I was very wrong to take Epstein so lightly.
In this excellent and brief timeline summary from the NPR website, Bill Chappell shows how the case stretches back over twenty years through a series of indictments and convictions and continued bad behavior by Mr. Epstein who finally died in a jail cell in New York City in 2019, putatively by his own hand. His associate Ghislane Maxwell, who was also convicted of sex crimes, still sits in jail.
That sounds like the end, right? Not even close.
It seems that MAGA-world really wants all the thousands of associated Epstein legal documents made public to find all the liberal names who committed lewd crimes. Even Mr. Trump, during his 2024 campaign, urged their release. Now that he’s in the White House, the Trump Justice Department including the FBI Director is fighting tooth and nail to keep the documents from the public and from Congress. The obvious question is why?
Many of the Epstein victims have spoken out about their abuse, but, for the most part, have not named names. CoPilot speculates they are afraid of retaliatory law suits from the rich and powerful who are involved. This is still very traumatic to the victims who are not anxious to relive that trauma. Apparently, many names are still redacted in the original documents. Some names including Presidents Clinton and Trump are in the documents, but it is still unclear that what they did was illegal. In essence, the case sounds like one that could bring down some rich and powerful people including the President of the United States, but there is barely a drip, drip of fact for prosecutors to act on. This all sounds very familiar to me. I have been here before.
On the morning of June 17, 1972, I was doing sit-ups on the floor of our tiny apartment living room in front of the first color television I had ever bought. It was purchased in anticipation of watching the Summer Olympics from Munich, but that was still weeks away. I was finishing up the last of my elective clinical rotations as a fourth-year Duke medical student. Genie was doing her required internal medicine rotation. We had just moved into that first apartment two months before our wedding.
A news story came on the new TV. There had been a break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate Building in Washington, D.C. I remember thinking: “why would anyone break into the DNC?”
Twenty-two months later, President Nixon resigned. Of course, if he did now what he did then it would not be illegal and he would have finished out his term. Instead, another in a series of American tragedies that began on November 22,1963 in Dallas and moved through additional political assassinations, an unwinnable war, inner city riots, and a presidential decision not to run, hurled the country into chaos from which it still has not regained its confidence. American political assassinations are becoming more, not less, common. Corruption seems to be everywhere in government. It would be no surprise if some big names were in the Epstein files and that the details would be anything but flattering.
Throughout the period from June 17, 1972 through August 9, 1974 when Nixon resigned, what had once seemed unthinkable, a president who couldn’t possibly lose performing criminal acts to make sure he couldn’t lose, the country crept toward the ineluctable. Then, in August, we were there.
The Epstein case feels like that to me. There are too many victims. His death is still mysterious. His consort is still in prison but vying for a pardon. The prosecutor who cut Epstein that neat deal in Florida became the Secretary of Labor and then resigned, and throughout it all, behind the scenes, the rich and powerful are being shielded from the not long enough arm of the law.
I don’t really know if the crimes against these young women are worse than the ones perpetrated by the public officials in Watergate. Why compare? The real issue is justice. Are the rich and famous like you and me? If Presidents of the United Sates are really named in these Epstein documents as having committed crimes, the public has a right to know. Even if they are innocent, those who are not need to face a jury of their peers and answer for their actions, even if that includes the Prince of England.
As I said above, until recently, I never cared about the Epstein case, but it has become a lightning rod and a litmus test (enough metaphors) for whether or not Mr. Trump and others like him really care about those who elected them–the farmer in Nebraska, the auto worker in Detroit, or the legal citizen-immigrant nanny in Houston—as they claim to, or are they just using the power granted to them by the votes of these people to commit horrible crimes?
How we handle this will say a lot about our country, our leaders, and our values.
