The real Epstein scandal is not that a billionaire cabal runs the world

The president has lost control of the Epstein narrative so much that congressional Democrats have turned it against him. For it to be successful, however, they must understand where one aspect of the narrative ends and where another aspect begins. If they do not focus on the facts of Epstein’s life, and instead play footsie with conspiracy theories about it, their gambit could backfire. They could find themselves where Donald Trump is.

Writing in Dissent last month, Lindsay Beyerstein wrote that there’s very little to suggest that Jeffrey Epstein was anything more than a rich deviant who committed a vast number of sex crimes in order to please himself – and only himself. “Perhaps more evidence will ultimately come to light,” Lindsay wrote, “but for now we’re left with copious evidence of Epstein trafficking to himself and no hard evidence that he trafficked to others.”

While that fact might seem to take the momentum out of “Epstein conspiracism [that] has now gone fully bipartisan,” Lindsay wrote, it shouldn’t. Congressional Democrats have “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hold the powerful to account,” she wrote, and they needn’t be “teetering on the edge of lunacy.”

“The real scandal of the Epstein saga is not that a billionaire cabal runs the world,” Lindsay said. “It’s that there is a billionaire class. The moral of the Epstein files is that nobody should be that rich.”

Lindsay Beyerstein is an investigative journalist who has not been seen in the pages of the Editorial Board lately, because she’s been working hard on a book about conspiracy theories as a political rejection of the Enlightenment. The working title is Against the Light: The Deep State Myth from the Illuminati to QAnon.

Here’s our conversation.

In your piece for Dissent, you establish that Epstein's sex crimes were his and his alone. That blows a hole in the conspiracy theories about him, from the right and the left.

It's only going to increase the level of paranoia. If this batch of files doesn't support their cherished conspiracy theories, true believers will insist the real secrets are still hidden. The truth is always just over the next hill. The circle of people who must be hiding the truth widens. You can hear grumbling on the forums about how politicians leading the charge for transparency are controlled opposition for the Epstein class, because they haven't produced the answers the conspiracists were looking for.

Pam Bondi was fired I think because she underestimated the power of the QAnon conspiracy theory that drove Trump back into office. If you’re right and Epstein did not pimp out to Trump, they’re still linked forever thanks to her. Whoops?

It's ironic, isn't it? Trump campaigned for the release of the Epstein files, which you wouldn't have expected him to do if he knew there was damning evidence against him therein. Maybe he figured his base was infinitely manipulable and that they'd believe Bondi's assurances. But he stoked a groundswell for accountability that he ultimately couldn't contain. The all-but unanimous passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act was the first true legislative revolt of his entire tenure as president.

There's no question Trump and Epstein did scummy stuff in the 1990s, like the time Trump threw a "pageant" of 28 girls that was just him and Epstein. I believe the claim by biographer Michael Wolff that he saw polaroids taken at Epstein's house of Trump and top---- women who were of what sex-crime investigators call "difficult age” (as in, difficult to tell how old they are.)

Trump is lucky that the Epstein files mostly cover events after 2004. That was the year that his friendship with Epstein ruptured over a mansion called La Maison de L'Amitié (aka the House of Friendship). Trump's also smart enough not to use email.

There may not be a QAnon conspiracy, but there is still a conspiracy. Your piece sketches one out. Billionaires could not exist without it. Epstein became Epstein by exploiting it.

Conspiracies are secret. In America, the accumulation of unlimited wealth is public gospel. We're supposed to admire these billionaires and defer to them. It's a national religion.

Thinking of this as a conspiracy of individuals makes it harder to think of the lawlessness of billionaires as a structural feature of our society. There are conspiracies, sure. But nobody has to scheme to achieve impunity for billionaires per se. If you have that much money you can paralyze the justice system, buy the media, dominate campaign spending, and do whatever you want.

Sorry to quote you at you but: "These are private companies that curate the lives and fortunes of the ultra-rich. They craft wills and trusts to dodge taxes. They invest the family’s money. They juggle their yachts, jets, and mansions. All their operations are cloaked in secrecy." Care to clarify?

Family offices are a great example of what happens when individual families control resources that rival those of small countries. Their operations are secret because their only client is the family. There are no shareholders, independent directors or regulators to answer to. And that money can buy anything from armed security to artistic treasures. As government has receded, they shape more of our lives by funding education, philanthropy, and even diplomacy and public policy through NGOs and think tanks. It's not one big conspiracy all pushing in one direction. The Kochs funded different stuff than Bill Gates did. But the billionaire class as a whole is shaping the world we all live in.

The Democrats are currently using language similar to what Trump used in 2024. "Massive cover up" is an example that comes to mind. What are the Democrats going to reveal when they gain power? That Epstein was merely a rich deviant? That takes the juice out of allegations against "the Epstein class."

If Democrats just echo the Trump rhetoric, the spiraling paranoia will discredit them the same way it discredited Trump. It's fine to call out the very real coverup that Trump and Bondi tried to execute, but there has to be more to it. Democrats need to propose measures to ensure greater accountability in the future, the way Senator Frank Church proposed sweeping reforms to the intelligence community in the 1970s. He didn't just expose the coverups, the boondoggles, and the atrocities. He helped usher in a whole package of reforms to rein in the American intelligence services. Democrats need to propose fixes to rein in the whole Epstein class so this doesn't happen again.

You suggest that the evil isn't a secret cabal. The evil is the existence of billionaires. (Evil is my word.) It would be great if that were the conclusion that most people came to, but as you say, that would run against the grain of our "national religion."

Supply-side crusaders have been preaching for decades that a rising tide lifts all boats and that people who are critical of massive socioeconomic inequality are just envious. A key premise of that argument is that a billionaire's wealth doesn't take anything away from anyone else. That's false. Massive inequalities in wealth create massive disparities in power, despite nominal legal equality. If you can afford to sink $100 million into a political campaign, your voice counts more than an ordinary voter's. We're not all equal before the law when some people can shrug off the heaviest fines like they're nothing or fight the legal system to a draw in the courts because money is no object.