I'm pretty much down with Josh Marshall on this. We know that Epstein used his money to prolifically procure teenage girls for his gratification. His panderer (who happens to be female) was convicted and is now in prison. Two other men -- Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz -- have been publicly accused of accepting underaged girls as gifts from Epstein. Dershowitz denies it, Prince Andrew denies it less convincingly. Other than that, there is no publicly available evidence that anyone else participated in his statutory rape conspiracy.
Epstein did give free plane rides to prominent people including Bill Clinton, and he partied with Donald Trump in the past but it appears they had a falling out. (Hardly unusual for the Dumpster.) Epstein funded a couple of Harvard and MIT researchers and otherwise used his money to rub up against prominent academics. But again, there's no publicly available evidence that any of these people did anything more than accept perfectly legal favors from him. (I believe one or more of the researchers got into trouble regarding university policy, but I'm not going to bother to look it up.)
As for Epstein's death, he certainly had ample motive for suicide -- he was looking forward to a very unpleasant life. On the other hand, it would certainly not be news that prison guards can be corruptible. You can distrust the investigation. Donald Trump was president at the time and maybe he had reason to cover it up or even ordered the hit. I wouldn't put anything past him. And Dershowitz is a Trump fellator so maybe that's why he had immunity. But . . .
The problem with this particular conspiracy theory is that Dershowitz's Trump fluffing would not give him any immunity from the New York Attorney General or Joe Biden's FBI, which also had the opportunity to take a second look at Epstein's death. (Not that I would expect Merrick Garland to get off his ass to do that.) If the reason Pam Bondi is covering up for somebody, then so did Joe Biden and Merrick Garland. Conceivably -- barely -- both figured they couldn't open the can one some people without opening it on all of them, but it seems more likely to me that there really is nothing there.
The point is that while you're always free to speculate, it's never wise to start believing without good evidence. Homo sapiens sees patterns everywhere, but they're often what's called pareidolia -- seeing the face of Jesus on toast, that sort of thing. There really are conspiracies and it's legitimate to have theories about them -- law enforcement does it all the time, that's their job. But they have to prove it.
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When it comes to actual conspiracies, I disagree with Chomsky. He thinks that a plot behind an event like 9/11 would simply be too large to keep a secret. However, it's been 62 years since JFK was murdered, and we still don't know who did it. But we know that what we were told wasn't the truth,
The perversity of our current situation is that outlandish bullshit conspiracy theories arise with the speed of a knee-jerk reaction. Now, the Texas floods were apparently a result of the government's manipulation of weather patterns.
It's just as likely that Epstein was murdered as that he committed suicide.
This epistemological crisis is making it difficult for a lot of people to think straight. At this point, I would just be happy if someone would release recordings of Shitler using the N-word on the site of his reprehensible TV show. I'm not sure that many people would care, since we're withholding $6 billion from school summer programs, and helping Israel to bomb the shit out of children in Gaza.
Have we no remaining sense of decency?
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