Why Do the Epstein Files Matter for Democracy?
Epshtein vs. Epstein
Uriel Epshtein (no relation to Jeffrey Epstein) is the CEO of the Renew Democracy Initiative.
As CEO of the Renew Democracy Initiative, I’m lucky to work with a lot of interesting and inspiring people. Political dissidents who faced down dictators under the world’s harshest regimes. Distinguished veterans who served our country.
So believe me when I tell you that the Epstein Files are the last thing I want to write about, and not least because the whole affair (literally) gives me a bad name. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to remind people that there’s an “h” in my last name that Jeffrey’s didn’t have. (Thanks, dad!)
More importantly, the Epstein issue is the kind of thing that causes a lot of Americans—even me!—to start to check out from politics and the democratic process. It’s easy to feel like the whole Washington ballgame is just sleazy people doing gross things.
But that’s precisely why the Epstein Files matter.
For Donald Trump, the batch of emails released yesterday are pretty damning. But why should we care?
We vote for people to legislate, govern, and enable our families to prosper. Instead, we get a bad crossover between Bravo and American Horror Story. There’s a reason President Gerald Ford described Watergate as “our long national nightmare.”
We comply with the laws that our representatives set because that is the basis of a safe and orderly society.
Scandals distract from the results that democracy is supposed to produce. Criminality on the part of our leaders undermines the bargain we all agreed to. It calls into question their ability to set the very laws that govern the rest of us. This is especially true of the heinous behavior Epstein and his associates engaged in, which victimized young women and girls—daughters, sisters, innocent people.
I’ve previously expressed my doubts about uncovering some big revelation in the Epstein files beyond an extension of what we already know. Still, I recognize that releasing these files is about holding our leaders to account and getting things back on track. Government cannot operate normally when our leaders—particularly the president—are implicated in deeply immoral and illegal conduct.
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Before this current, hyperpartisan chapter of our history, it was not difficult to find instances of public servants pursuing justice even if it meant punishing members of their own party.
Under President Joe Biden, the Department of Justice indicted longtime Democratic Senator Bob Menendez on federal corruption charges. Before Biden’s term was out, Menendez had been convicted.
President George W. Bush’s DOJ secured convictions against Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff in a corruption probe that ultimately ensnared other prominent members of the GOP including a congressman and senior federal officials.
Perhaps we took this way of doing things for granted. Yet in the grand scheme of history and geography, that level of responsibility really was remarkable.
Contrast all of this with the USSR of my father’s youth. Two years after my dad was born, a man named Lavrentiy Beria was named head of the Soviet secret police. Like Epstein, Beria was a sexual predator, among other nasty characteristics.
For fifteen years, Beria climbed higher and higher through the Moscow power structure. He was ultimately deposed, but it was in a coup, not a systematic investigation, and the Soviet system installed different types of predators in his stead.
This is not about partisan point scoring against Donald Trump. Continuing to enjoy abundance means keeping the instruments of accountability in good working order.
Will this episode signal “the end” for Trump’s presidency, as many of his opponents are eagerly predicting? I’m not holding my breath. Still, it is heartening that so many Americans—of all political persuasions—want the files released. This is an instinct we should reinforce in ourselves and our neighbors alongside a healthy measure of skepticism. We should not allow ourselves to fall into conspiratorial rabbit holes, but the impulse to demand accountability, regardless of who is in power, is the beating heart of democracy. If this is the moment that reignites that fire in many Americans, then perhaps something good can come from something rotten. Far from being the end, this is only the beginning.
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I think the biggest problem in American democracy (according to me at least) that the Epstein files have simply shed a light on is the unwillingness of those who are elected to do their jobs and uphold the institutions they've been entrusted with.
No senator and no congressperson should feel beholden to the president when acting in their own capacity.
The speaker of the house should not be permitted ignorance as an excuse on every question.
Nominees for positions should be recalled and dismissed when their statements during evaluation prove to have been false.
These are the horrifying things happening to Democracy in America.
The fact that they've suppressed the various evils Trump has committed as a result is just a symptom.
"I’ve previously expressed my doubts about uncovering some big revelation in the Epstein files beyond an extension of what we already know."
I guess we think similarly. Here's what I wrote yesterday-
'The idea that there will be some great revelation from any details found in the report is a farce. Trump is a degenerate criminal sexual predator who, over his entire adult life, amused himself by keeping company with other degenerates, criminals and sexual predators.
Here’s what’s not the center of attention, but should be-
The Epstein-Maxwell operation was a hub of trafficking of vulnerable women and girls, money laundering, and the creation of extortion dossiers on hundreds of public officials from around the world. Operating openly, for decades. That should horrify all of us.
Of course the rank and file fascists won’t blink an eye at any new details of Trump’s depravity, because as a group, to a person, the rank and file fascists (especially the evangelicals and Christian nationalists) are every bit as depraved.
Trump is their guy, because he is a reflection of them.'