Reader's Mailbag

Answering your questions about the Epstein Files

I received a lot of mail this week, so I thought I would use this space to answer some of your questions.

One reader to my column “Epstein’s Global Reach” asked me to address the fact that “the newest strategy from MAGA appears to be to discredit the victims as making false accusations just to get a payout. They claim that the only people who actually abused the girls were Maxwell and Epstein, and that they were not trafficked to anyone else.”

Answer: The reason they are using this strategy is to silence survivors. They are also mounting an aggressive effort to discredit Virginia Giuffre in order to send a message that “if you speak up we will attack you, your family, your life.” The Government needs to justify its inability to charge other co-conspirators. One way to do that is to say the victims’ stories couldn’t be corroborated. The question is “Did they try?” Victims believe that one of the reasons they are not redacting victims' names is to intimidate them. To some degree, it is working, as the victims I know who were trafficked to other men are too afraid to go public.

Q: From the column “Understanding Epstein’s Crimes.” I'm only now at this admittedly late date coming to a fuller awareness of the Epstein schemes. My first question : how has it been that seven years after his death no one has been investigated or arrested? Including four years of the. Biden administration . Not to be crude, but WTF?

A: This crime has spanned at least four presidential administrations. To be fair, crimes that happened so many years ago become more difficult to prosecute the more time that goes by. That’s why I have focused a lot of attention on the first failure, which was in South Florida. Had federal prosecutors done due diligence back then (in 2007, when the victims’ memories and evidence were fresh) it would have been much easier to convict Epstein and put him in jail for the rest of his life. That would have spared so many victims. Now, we are here a decade later. Putting together a case against powerful men with endless means to defend themselves is a daunting, though not impossible, task. There has to be a will to undertake this — and thus far it appears no one has been willing to fight for these victims, except for those lawmakers in Congress who are still asking tough questions and demanding the files be unredacted. The will comes from the public. Write your elected representatives.

Q: Is there any evidence that some Intel Services (Russia, Israel excluded of course) have all or part of the Epstein files? Apparently the M5 did.

If there was an Intel op side to this (kompromat of prominent people in sensitive positions in government, industry etc) and Epstein was monetizing the Kompromat, I would be astonished that Intel Agencies & operatives in the EU and elsewhere would not have the receipts.

A: I have seen no definitive evidence that Epstein was a spy — in other words, that he was working for a Government, whether it was the CIA or Mossad. I know there are sleuths out there who believe he was in intelligence, and I do think that he provided intel to people when he could monetize it. That to me doesn’t mean he was employed as a spy. I think he was a money launderer and sex trafficker who used what intel he had as currency to make connections to enrich himself.

Questions? Send them to jkbjournaliist25@gmail.com