This Is Not Just About the Files. It’s About What We Do Now.
How the Epstein case has exposed the system — and given us a rare opening to act.
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What we’ll cover here:
The bipartisan illusion of transparency
Survivors have given us the truth
Where change becomes possible
Dear friends
Every time this case returns to public view, it stirs something deep. Not just anger or outrage, but a sense that maybe — just maybe — this time the truth will matter. But today I want to offer a different lens. One that doesn’t just ask what’s in the files — but what the fight over them is really showing us.
We’ve been told the files would bring justice. That if the names came out — if the redactions were lifted, if the documents saw daylight — it would finally be clear who was guilty, who was protected, and who still needed to answer for what they did. That promise has been made across administrations, by politicians of both parties, by survivors, by journalists, and by a public that wanted to believe the truth would matter once it was undeniable.
But the truth has been out for some time now. Not every detail, not with every name — but certainly, in substance.
Survivors have taken the incredibly courageous step of testifying under oath against wealthy and powerful people. Lawsuits have been filed — and even settled. Flight logs have been circulated, and depositions unsealed. And the response of the system — from prosecutors, from the courts, from Congress, from the press — has told us everything we need to know.
This is not about the files anymore — it’s about what the fight over the files reveals, and what we do with that. Because the fight over the files shows us how power protects itself — through silence, and then performance. We have watched institutions that should be protecting the people pretend to pursue the truth, while instead they merely manage its fallout. We have watched people who campaigned on transparency delay subpoenas, redact names, and hand over binders filled with documents that have been in plain sight for years, as though they were sharing some great secret.
Meanwhile, the women who were harmed are still waiting. The people who did harm have — for the most part — walked away, untouched. And the system that made that possible has made itself perfectly apparent — if we are willing to look.
It's a system that knows how to wait people out. That gives the appearance of action while protecting its own. That leaks just enough to suggest momentum, while quietly ensuring nothing changes.
So no, for me the problem isn’t that we don’t have the files. The problem is that everything we already know tells the same story — and too many of us are still choosing not to act.
The Bipartisan Illusion of Transparency
We all know Trump promised to release the files. It was a centrepiece of his 2024 campaign —the promise that, once returned to power, he would expose the names, release the evidence, and finally dismantle what his base had long imagined as a paedophile elite operating behind the scenes of American power. The implication was sweeping: that he alone would tell the truth, even if that truth implicated the rich and well-connected. It fed directly into years of QAnon-adjacent mythmaking and set a public expectation that this time, justice would look different. And he hasn’t acted.
But we need to zoom out to the bigger picture to understand that this isn’t just a Trump-era story.
Epstein was first investigated in 2005, after a 14-year-old girl told Florida police that Epstein had sexually abused her. That investigation quickly uncovered more victims. By 2006, the Palm Beach police had compiled evidence from over a dozen underage girls and handed the case to the state prosecutor — who declined to bring serious charges.
The case was then referred to federal authorities. That’s when Alexander Acosta — serving as U.S. Attorney under George W. Bush, but subsequently Trump’s Secretary of Labor — made a secret plea deal with Epstein’s legal team. Epstein pleaded guilty to two state-level charges in 2008 — neither were federal — and served just 13 months in a local jail, much of it on daily work release. The deal granted immunity to his unnamed co-conspirators, and survivors were never told the terms.
When Epstein re-entered the headlines, neither party moved to fully re-examine how he’d been protected the first time. There were no consequences for the prosecutors who had cut the deal. No investigation into the federal offices that had enabled it. No reckoning with the web of legal, political, and financial influence that kept him insulated for so long.
Instead, the same pattern played out again.
Epstein was arrested for the second time in 2019, under Trump’s first administration. He died in federal custody less than six weeks later. But his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell was tried and convicted in 2021 — under a Democratic president, Democratic attorney general, and Democratic-controlled House.
Maxwell's trial was tightly managed — key documents were kept sealed, and the court limited the scope of what could be publicly introduced. She was found guilty, sentenced to twenty years, and the case was declared closed. But the most powerful people whose names had circulated in connection to Epstein — through lawsuits, logs, or testimony — were never charged.
The Biden administration had every opportunity to open the files. They chose not to. They could have called for full disclosure from the Department of Justice. They could have supported legal action to unseal grand jury materials. They did neither.
And when survivors like Virginia Giuffre and Teresa Helm continued to press for answers, they were largely ignored.
When Maxwell’s trial ended, it was treated as the final act, not the beginning of a broader investigation. The promise of accountability faded into silence, with Democrats taking credit for the conviction but avoiding any structural challenge to the networks that had protected Epstein for decades.
Then Trump returned.
In February of this year, Pam Bondi — his newly installed attorney general — announced the release of The Epstein Files: Phase 1. It was 341 pages, and it was almost entirely drawn from previously available court records and media investigations. The few new documents were heavily redacted. Nonetheless, Bondi distributed the materials in official DOJ binders to right-wing influencers. She had previously claimed, in a widely circulated Fox News interview, that Epstein’s “client list” was “sitting on my desk right now to review”. But the staged release did not deliver that list, or anything close to it — the performance was the point.
Recently, pressure has been mounting once again. Trump’s base, long told to expect justice, has begun to turn on him. Some members of Congress have tried to seize the moment. On Wednesday, a House Oversight subcommittee voted to subpoena the DOJ for full access to Epstein-related records. The vote passed 8–2, with three Republicans joining Democrats. But under House rules, the full subpoena cannot be issued unless Chair James Comer signs it — and he hasn’t. The motion exists, the political messaging is in place, but once again, there appears to be no legal force behind it.
At the same time, Trump’s DOJ has attempted to petition federal courts in Florida and New York to unseal grand jury transcripts from the 2005, 2007, and 2019 investigations. And again, on Wednesday, Judge Robin Rosenberg in Florida rejected the request, ruling that it did not fall under any permitted exception to grand jury secrecy. In New York, two judges have asked the DOJ to make a stronger case and given a deadline, but made clear they remain unconvinced. Yes — the Biden administration never made these petitions during its time in office, but the Trump administration’s effort came only after internal and external political pressure. The legal filings also appear deliberately weak. Which raises the question — is disclosure actually the goal?
This is what bipartisan failure looks like. One party prosecutes a limited case while shielding the rest. The other performs outrage and disclosure while delivering redactions and delay. Both use the case when it suits them. Both step back when the consequences draw close to power.
Meanwhile, what’s been protected all along is not a party or a president — it’s the deeper structure that allows this kind of impunity to exist in the first place.
Survivors Have Given Us the Truth — We Haven’t Listened
Long before files were unsealed or subpoenas became political currency, the real story had already been brought into public view — through lawsuits, sworn testimony, and the voices of courageous survivors who refused to stay silent.
Virginia Giuffre was among the first willing to stand up and speak truth to power. She sued Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and later Prince Andrew. Legal filings from 2015 onward, and her civil lawsuit against Andrew in 2021, brought her claims into the public arena — leading to a substantial 2022 settlement that was never formally disclosed, though widely reported to be around £12 million.
Tragically, Virginia died by suicide in April this year at age 41, at her farm in Western Australia. Her family issued a statement calling her “a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking” and emphasising the unbearable toll the abuse and public scrutiny took on her life. But her death also exposed a truth more damning than any redaction: we never truly listened, and we sure didn’t act. The spotlight and momentum faded — but the system kept going.
Then there’s Teresa Helm, another survivor whose testimony is equally clear but less celebrated. In a feature on Democracy Now! this month, Helm described her recruitment and grooming by Maxwell, followed by her assault by Epstein. She didn’t demand revenge or political theatre — she asked for a justice system that finally centres survivors above spectacle:
“I really urge everyone to focus their commitment, their intention, all this time, effort and energy onto … these survivors and their healing… It should not be weaponized either way…”
The truths of these women are already public.
Virginia Giuffre brought lawsuits that forced critical documents into the public record. She named names — not all the names, but enough. Teresa Helm went on the record again and again, spelling out what happened. She laid out the mechanics of how the system works — how trust is built, how it’s used to groom, how it becomes a trap — and how it protects itself.
They, and other survivors have told us the truth — in lawsuits, depositions, sworn testimony, interviews, and courtrooms. Together, they have given us a clearer picture than any redacted file ever could, laying out the structure, the facilitators, and the men who paid.
So we don’t need to wait — the record is already there, if we choose to treat it as one. These women’s words aren’t hidden in redactions or sealed grand jury vaults — they live in the open record. That holds more truth than any redacted memo ever could. Their words do not need unsealing.
What does need to be unsealed is our compassion and attention.
Because still, the centre of gravity remains elsewhere — on what might be released, what might be unsealed, whose name might appear. On the procedural fight, instead of the human one.
My question then isn’t whether we’ll get access to the rest of the documents. It’s whether we’ll recognise what’s already been handed to us — and what it’s asking of us now.
Where Change Becomes Possible
The Epstein files may never be released in full.
The House Oversight subpoena could still be issued — but it also might not, because James Comer hasn’t yet signed it. Ghislaine Maxwell’s sealed deposition could be delayed for years or quietly negotiated out of public view. Court rulings have already blocked access to grand jury transcripts. These are not hypotheticals. They are the visible shape of power.
Even if the files are released, they may come to us heavily redacted or deliberately delayed. The February disclosure from Trump’s Justice Department set the tone: 341 pages, almost all of them already public. Little we didn’t already know. Nothing that touched the network of men who were never meant to be named.
Which is why the documents themselves are no longer the point.
The deeper story has already unfolded. Not in the sealed files, but in how every institution responded. The redactions. The stalled subpoenas. The political theatre. The refusal to act on what’s already known. Survivors came forward. They named names. They told the truth in public.
We saw what happened, and we watched the system choose impunity. The institutions that could have acted — Congress, the Justice Department, the courts — chose instead to shield the system. Not just the individuals inside it, but the underlying logic that lets power protect itself.
That’s why the Epstein case isn’t a mystery to be solved. It’s a mirror. A reflection of the world as it is — and of how power protects itself.
And that mirror is an opening.
Trump came to power promising to drain the swamp. That’s what appealed to so many of his voters — the belief that he would name names and take down the elite networks operating behind the scenes. But now, that promise is collapsing in plain view. Even his base is beginning to see it: the man who claimed he’d clean up the system may be central to it.
That’s not just a betrayal. It’s a fracture.
Because when people start to realise the person they trusted to deliver justice is instead protecting the very networks he vowed to expose, it creates a deep rupture. Not just in how they see that leader — but in how they understand power itself.
And in that rupture, something opens.
The story no longer holds. The slogans ring hollow. And in that uncomfortable silence, people may become more willing — to reconsider old loyalties, ask new questions, listen to new voices. To look again at what they thought they knew.
It’s in that space that change can begin.
That’s why this moment matters. Not because of what’s in the files, but because of what’s happening around them — a quiet collapse of illusion, powerful enough to dislodge old certainties.
And that’s why we need to consider how we respond to this moment.
Next week I’ll offer a strategy on how we can meet the disillusionment now taking root, while the cracks are still visible. Not reactively, not vindictively, but strategically. Because when the old narratives begin to fall apart, there’s a brief window to offer something truer in their place. So let’s not waste it on partisan point-scoring or proxy battles. Let’s not waste it at all. Let’s use it to build something better.
Every time this case returns to the headlines, every time another round of speculation or outrage flares up, the women at the centre of it — the ones who were abused, trafficked, and silenced — are forced to relive the very thing they’ve spent their life trying to leave behind. Each cycle of spectacle reopens deep wounds that are never allowed to heal.
We owe it to them not to stand on the sidelines, watching again. We owe it to them — and to each other — to do what we can to break the system that protected their abusers, and to build something stronger, truer, and safer in its place.
Let that time start now.
— Lori
Addendum:
A reader rightly noted that Attorney General Merrick Garland, not President Biden personally, held decision-making power over whether to reopen the Epstein files. It’s true that the Biden administration maintained a formal distance from the Department of Justice — a firewall designed to preserve institutional independence. But in cases like this, where public trust and systemic accountability are on the line, that distance doesn’t absolve the administration from the consequences of inaction. I stand by the broader point: no meaningful effort was made, from any level of leadership, to pursue full disclosure or justice. Still, Garland’s specific role deserves to be named — and I’m grateful for the reminder.
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The piece is thought-provoking. Two primary thoughts were provoked.
First, for the rest of my life I'm going to avoid the construction "It's not just an X. It's a Y."
Second, while justice and peace for the victims is paramount, I think we must also think about today in this context:
The best-case scenario globally, for all of us as one interconnected species, is to remove this abomination of an administration, try to revert as much of what they have done as possible, and repair the rest. So I voted for Structural Reform. If we think about this situation with multiple scopes or lenses -- one lens being forwarding feminism and moving past patriarchy, and the other complete detrumpification, reversal of the existential blunders that have occurred since, say, Citizens United -- I think we approach today's posture a little bit differently.
I don't have the answer to what to do next. But I think it's quite important that we shoot for the best-case outcomes, which might reorient our tactics a bit. There's more forming in my brain about what to say next but I'll hit Post for now and come back once that solidifies a bit.
I voted for "Demanding accountability," but I view it as only a tactical starting point, not the ultimate objective.
The problem, as Lori's excellent analysis points out, is that the demand for accountability has itself become a bipartisan performance. This is a core function of what the doctrine calls the "Puppet Colosseum"—a carefully managed spectacle designed to channel public anger into a political dead end. Focusing only on accountability risks keeping us trapped in Layer 2 of the "Three-Layered Prison": The Great Distraction. It's a strategy of targeting the political "sheepdogs" while the financial "shepherds" who actually control the system remain untouched.
That's why the real work has to be "Pushing for structural reform". The only lasting solution is to declare a form of economic secession from the "Corporate State" and build our own resilient, parallel institutions. The goal isn't just to expose their rigged game; it's to build a new one. That's the only path to real justice.