The Epstein Grift

Thomas Massie’s claim to fame has caused him to abandon Libertarian ideals in favor of an uninformed mob-like cancel culture. Ro Khanna’s idiocy is to be expected.

Introduction

There’s a pattern you’ll notice in any walk of the political sphere. It’s the pattern of empty rhetoric combined with blatant misinformation. It’s far more profitable to play into people’s intuitions than to be genuine truth seekers. Political leaders have triple the incentive to play into intuitions for political brownie points. Massie and Khanna have been at the forefront of this absurd witch hunt. It’s expected that a vacuous shell of a politician like Ro Khanna would be playing on the public’s ignorance of the Epstein files, but seeing Massie play into this mob-like cancel culture is quite disappointing, to say the least, although it does get some libertarian traction, I suppose.

Preliminary Data

Considering public trust is at an all-time low, it seems quite scummy to capitalize on everyone’s distrust and hyper-skepticism to forward your political career. Unfortunately, self-interest will triumph over collective harm through opportunistic disinformation.

Terrible Handling Meets Hyper-Skepticism

Libertarians have been calling to “expose” the Epstein political class for a while now. Of course, this stems from their distrust of government, politicians, and the state, possibly playing defense for bipartisan pedophile elites. And who can really blame them with how wishy-washy the current administration has been with the Epstein files.

In September of 2021, VP JD Vance said:

Fast forward to November of 2025, and Karoline Leavit is proclaiming to be this hyper-transparent, honest government:

“This administration has done more with respect to transparency when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein than any administration ever.”

All while Trump and JD are explicitly calling it a Democrat hoax. Turns out, voters don’t take it too kindly when you signal aggressive openness on the campaign trail with respect to a pedophile ring narrative you fabricated for political profits. And now you have to reap the punishment when there’s nothing of substance to release. It just sounds incredibly wishy-washy to the untrained ear.

Political elites and unspeakable crimes practically go hand in hand; libertarian anti-communists know this very well. In 1992, workers unearthed an enormous pile of bones at the Tunisian embassy in Russia, formerly owned by Secret Police Chief Lavrentiy Beria (Montefiore, 2003; Rayfield, 2004).

Intuitively, when the state grows in size, the capability to cover up its internal crimes becomes easier; it seems prima facie plausible to chalk up the Epstein files as such a case. Unfortunately, reality is more than prima facie intuitions, and much of the research I’ve done doesn’t come close to a grand sex blackmail operation that many would like to make it out to be.

What We Know and What We Don’t

Libertarians like Massie are leading the charge in exposing the “Epstein class”. The widespread belief is that powerful pedophiles like Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, and so on have escaped the grasp of the justice system. But remember, nothing has been released to confirm such accusations beyond highly circumstantial evidence.

While Epstein’s criminal activity involving sexual acts with underage girls is documented to some extent, a wider celebrity blackmail scheme has not.

In 2005, police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein after a parent reported that he had paid her 14-year-old step-daughter to strip and massage him. Investigators identified 36 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 with similar accounts of sexual abuse. Prosecutors held concerns about taking him to trial, citing the victim’s reluctance to testify and witness credibility. This influenced a now-controversial plea deal negotiation, under which Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges of procuring a minor for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute. He was registered as a sex offender and served 13 months in jail with work release.

Honestly, the entire fiasco has seemed like a shitshow from the start because of this salient political narrative of pedophile elites. Even the communist cranks over at the ACP are jumping on this as a way to forward their movement.

“Epstein class/regime” is the new unpatched method to garner attention quickly; just call your opponents the Epstein defenders, and you’ll get instant positive attention. The funny thing is, this is worse than Jack the Ripper gaining massive notoriety for killing just five people. Epstein is treated as the face of Zionism, sex scandals, and more, when there’s little to no evidence of a giant child sex trafficking ring.

At best, according to Michael Tracey, there’s evidence of Epstein being inappropriate with underage women, and he was certainly a sexual predator and a criminal by all legal standards. However, much of the discourse stems from unsubstantiated accusations from unreliable witnesses like Virginia Giuffre, who later recanted her accusations against Alan Dershowitz, calling it a mistake. Even with Prince Andrew, despite being under massive public scrutiny, there’s no corroboration that he had any kind of sexual intimacy with Giuffre. I mostly agree with Tracey’s coverage and journalistic philosophy, i.e., the notion that allegations and sensational media interviews should be taken lightly until corroborated with independent evidence.

Jumping back to the modern handling of this scandal, congressmen like Massie and Khanna are rampantly running around trying to put on a circus-like spectacle about how much they’re trying to release the files and drain the swamp. Sorry, but YOU ARE THE SWAMP, YOU ARE THE ONE OBFUSCATING OFF OF GOOD ECONOMIC POLICY WITH POLITICAL JESTERING.

Representative Ro Khanna, who partnered with Massie, has effectively abused the congressional immunity clause (Speech or Debate Clause) to blast out unrelated names of individuals on the House floor who he accused of being related to Epstein. This is a serious issue for several reasons.

Already from the get-go, a minimum of four are completely unrelated to Epstein’s crimes. In one transcript, it appears that these individuals were named merely because they had obtained a gun permit at the same time as Ghilane Maxwell. Congressmen were supposed to meticulously ensure the redactions were accurate and that the public release wouldn’t catch a bunch of random innocent people, but of course, who the hell cares when your only goal is political brownie points?

As Attorney General Todd Blanche put it:

A day after viewing the complete files, Khanna said in a floor speech that one document included redactions for “six wealthy, powerful men” and claimed that the DOJ concealed their identities “for no apparent reason.” The Justice Department revealed the six names in the document after a joint appeal from Khanna and Massie.

Blanche said on the social platform X on Friday that the lawmakers “forced the unmasking of completely random people selected years ago for an FBI lineup- men and women.”

“These individuals have NOTHING to do with Epstein or Maxwell,” he wrote in the post.

The greatest irony in all of this is that the reason behind releasing the files was to expose wrongdoers and protect victims, but instead, they’ve done a civil liberties violation by tarnishing innocent reputations with zero evidence, zero due process, and zero way for these people to defend themselves.

Next, Ro Khanna brought Haley Robson as his guest for the State of the Union address, showing her off as his shiny political toy. Supposedly, she was a victim and survivor of Epstein’s sex trafficking ring. Funnily enough, Haley Robson had publicly confessed to recruiting and bringing underage girls to Epstein. She was not any kind of victim; she was literally pimping girls out for Epstein.

“I would recruit girls who were friends. I would casually bring it up, and we would drive together to his house. I would take them to his room and then I’d walk out. Sometimes I would wait by the pool. When the girls would leave, Jeffrey would come out and pay me. I probably recruited 24 girls. Those girls brought other girls too. They were all underage,” Robson told interviewers.

When Khanna puts political theater over any sort of due diligence or justice, things break down very quickly. It’s possible she was manipulated by Epstein to do such things, but this kind of nuance was wiped away entirely during Khanna’s little political play.

As far as I’m aware, neither Khanna nor Massie has even once tried to debunk the blatant lies they’ve helped propagate. At best, we’ll have Khanna quietly make a 2 sentence statement about how the little show he put on on the Senate floor was actually a mistake. Long after the misinformation has been passed around like a disease.

Khanna subsequently admitted his mistake while placing blame on the Department of Justice. Khanna stated, “I wish the DoJ had provided that explanation earlier instead of redacting and then unredacting their names. They have failed to protect survivors, created confusion for innocent men, and have protected rich and powerful abusers.”

Massie’s defense of this conduct was pathetic to say the least:

“I actually said on national TV Monday that four of them might be men in a lineup, but you released them anyway. <roll tape> Maybe you should have checked with your folks first, or provided some context, instead of trying to beat my TV appearance and then blaming us,” Massie said.

Believe it or not, the right thing to do when there are redactions without further information isn’t to just do a joint appeal and then release the names on a whim. Zero due diligence isn’t at all okay for our political leaders, especially when it’s clear that they’re just trigger-happy to get some names out for a little TikTok soundbite, even if it tags innocent people on the way out.

Justice for Larry Summers

The problem is, with the first few batches of information drops, we’ve seen how bloodthirsty the populist crowd is. They’re looking for blood; anyone who’s even vaguely associated with Epstein is dogpiled into oblivion.

With Larry Summers, he already stands at the pinnacle of economics, having served as the Treasury Secretary and Clintonton, a former president of Harvard, and a former economic advisor to Obama. Most people are probably envious of his career prestige, subconsciously wanting to tear him down.

With the last batch, we saw a few emails of Summers consulting Epstein. Not with anything to do with underage girls, but purely about pursuing a romantic relationship while being married. As of right now, there’s ZERO evidence that Summers was connected to Epstein. Despite this, he’s been effectively pressured by the public, politicians,and even internally by students at Harvard.

As one student puts it:

“Really important that he doesn’t just direct the apology to us, but to the greater world, and the community, and all the people affected, not at Harvard”.

It’s either schizophrenia or blatant ignorance. The only scandalous thing was Summers’ relationship with Epstein and his affair. Who was affected outside of Harvard? In fact, who was even affected at Harvard? Not a single one of the students interviewed had any idea what was going on outside of some vague boogeyman stories.

Even Massie, in all his libertarian ignorance, jumped on this opportunity:

It’s honestly remarkable how fast the standard by which we cancel people collapses as soon as populist temper tantrums enter the room. Adultery is suddenly treated as a career-ending moral failure. I know a lot of Christians might agree with this, but even the left-wingers are jumping all over Summers’ canceling.

If this were applied consistently, we would literally hollow out institutions. Politicians would be booted out in record numbers; Gavin Newsom would’ve been booted out ages ago. University departments would shrivel in size. Everyone knows this. It’s only because Larry Summers had the little “Epstein brand logo” on his cheating scandal that it’s such a career-ending moral failing. In fact, most people you ask probably think Larry Summers is some kind of pedophile. There’s no evidence for such a belief. So obviously, this is not something someone should lose their enormously productive and fruitful career over.

There’s also this argument that because Summers was “cozy” with Epstein, suddenly he’s a threat to society, akin to a sexual predator.

As Senator Elizabeth Warren put it:

“For decades, Larry Summers has demonstrated his attraction to serving the wealthy and well-connected, but his willingness to cozy up to a convicted sex offender demonstrates monumentally bad judgment,” Warren told CNN. “If he had so little ability to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein even after all that was publicly known about Epstein’s sex offenses involving underage girls, then Summers cannot be trusted to advise our nation’s politicians, policymakers, and institutions — or teach a generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else.”

On this one, my view is a bit more iffy. Our justice system implies that once you’ve served your time, you’ve effectively made up for your crimes. If your friend of two decades did an abhorrent sexual crime (what was known at the time), and had served his sentence, I don’t think it’s that strange to stay in contact with them. Whether Summers is a danger to the students of Harvard, who are likely all over 18 by the way, is not a concern. There’s no evidence to support such a claim or concern on that front. It is purely a matter of misinformed populist outrage.

Conclusions and Implications

To wrap this all up, the Epstein saga, once stripped of its conspiratorial nonsense, is a boring story of a predator who’s loosely connected to elites. This, given the relevant incentives of politicians, has caused an enormous political opportunist mob psychology story. Instead of tearing through the files and seeing zero evidence of a grand blackmail operation/ring, we’ve instead seen a growing distrust in institutions and the government. The mere name drop of Epstein is enough to destroy careers, get around due process, and trample over basic liberties.

The real lesson out of all of this is that populist outrage can easily be weaponized by opportunistic politicians. Yes, Epstein was a criminal, but in modern times, he’s more of a blank check for mob justice that doesn’t vindicate any victims and instead produces new ones.