File 54 - Why Predators Like Epstein Keep Getting Protected

This episode explores similar cases (NXIVM, Raniere), systemic issues, and power and accountability.

Sources for this episode are being compiled. See the full source list by visiting: https://epsteinfiles.fm/episode/ep54

About The Epstein Files

The Epstein Files is an AI-generated podcast analyzing the 3.5 million pages released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA). All content is sourced from primary documents.

Transcript

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3 million pages of evidence. Thousands of unsealed flight logs, Millions of data points, names, themes and timelines connected. You are listening to the Epstein Files, the world's first AI native investigation into the case that traditional journalism simply could not handle. Welcome back to the Epstein Files. You know, the central mystery here, it isn't just about one man. It's really about why he wasn't the only one. You look at cases like nxivm Keith Rainier and you just, you see these similar patterns of abuse and wealth and protection appearing over and over again. Today we're going to examine what these cases really have in common. We're going to look at the recently discussed files, the, I mean, the absolute erasure of surveillance footage and the, the deeper sociology of violence and power. Let's start with the evidence that links these worlds together. It's a really tangled web, isn't it? And frankly, the more you pull at one of these threads, the more you realize this just isn't about a few bad apples. It's. Yeah, it's about the entire barrel. Right. But to understand the barrel, you have to look at the documentation that's actually managed to surface. So I think we have to start with the release of what everyone now calls the Maxwell files. Yes. And that was such a huge moment. I remember when that dropped, it felt like the entire Internet just stopped. It just stopped what it was doing to pay attention. We're talking about the unsealing of documents specifically related to Ghislaine Maxwell. Right. And looking at our source material, especially the coverage around this Epstein Powell's alert, it describes a total social media frenzy when these crowd documents from 2015 were finally made public. But why 2015? I mean, why did it take so long for people to really care? Critical question, isn't it? The source of material really highlights this deep frustration. It asks point blank, when is the media going to report on this? Because these weren't new documents, not really. They were from a defamation case that was settled years before. So the information was just sitting there. It was sitting in a dark room, basically collecting dust. The frenzy happened because the unsealing, it finally validated what had been whispered about in, you know, conspiracy circles and on back channels for a decade. It was that moment the rumor suddenly became record. And once it became record, we saw the names. And I really want to spend a moment here because it's so easy to get numb to celebrity names. We just hear them and we shrug. Sure. But the source material lists specific, very high profile individuals who are mentioned in these Documents as having visited the private island. We are talking about Prince Andrew, right? We are talking about Alan Dershowitz. We are talking about former President Bill Clinton. It's a roll call of the establishment, really. Ex. And this is where I feel like the conversation so often goes off the rails. People see a name like Clinton and they just immediately retreat into their political bunker. You know, if you're on the right, you cheer. If you're on the left, you deflect or try to explain it away. But looking at this list, Prince Andrew is royalty. Dershowitz is. I mean, he's the pinnacle of the legal elite. Clinton is the pinnacle of the political elite. And this doesn't look like a political party to me. No. And that's probably the single most important takeaway from those Maxwell files. These names, they span the entire political and social spectrum. You've got the monarchy, which is supposed to be above politics. You have the top of the legal system, and you have the executive branch. It completely reinforces this idea that we aren't looking at a partisan issue here. This is not left versus right. This is a class issue. It's an issue of access and power. It's the club. The club that we're not in. Precisely. And that club operates on a very specific currency, and that currency is mutual protection. The source material around that Epstein Powell's alert, it isn't just a gotcha list of names. It's a map of a network. A map. That's a good way to put it. And the reason there was such a delay in the truth telling, the reason the media was so slow to report, as the source notes, with that, you know, that really palpable frustration, is that the media is often part of that same ecosystem. Well, access to these people is the absolute lifeblood of political and society journalism. If you're a reporter and you burn the bridge to Prince Andrew or to Bill Clinton, you don't just lose one story, you lose your access. And if you lose access, you lose your career. So the silence wasn't accidental. It was structural. I would argue it was a survival mechanism for the very people who are supposed to be our watchdogs. Which brings us to a really disturbing counter pattern. Because if the Maxwell files represent information finally, you know, clawing its way into the light, we also have evidence of information being actively suppressed or. Or even removed by the very institutions that are meant to investigate. You're talking about the DOJ database anomalies. Yeah. We have a source here titled pinpoint database of U.S. justice Department's Epstein Files. And I have to admit, when I first read this, I had to read it twice, because it describes a situation where the US Justice Department began releasing documents and multimedia from its investigation into the sex trafficking operation. Which is what you want, right? Transparency. That's what we ask for. Ideally, but the source explicitly states that the DOJ began releasing and then deleting documents and multimedia. Now, look, I'm not a lawyer, but usually when the government releases something, it stays released. Why would you put it up just to take it down again? That is the core of the allegation in the source, and it is incredibly damning. The source notes that these items were uploaded and then subsequently removed. Now, a skeptic might say, oh, maybe it was a clerical error. Maybe they uploaded the wrong file by mistake. Sure, you could argue that. But we have to look at the content of what was allegedly deleted. That's where it gets very specific. And this is where we get back to that political neutrality we were just talking about. Because earlier we mentioned Clinton from the Maxwell file. Correct. And this source, the one regarding the deleted DOJ files, reports that several of the deleted items specifically connect Epstein to President Donald Trump. Okay, so let's just. Let's pause and look at the whole board here. On one side, you have unsealed documents linking a former Democratic president. On the other side, you have reports of deleted documents linking a former Republican president. If you're looking at this through a partisan lens, your head is going to explode. Yeah. You will be constantly trying to defend your guy and attack the other guy. But if you just take a step back, what do you actually see? I see a system that protects the powerful, and it doesn't matter what jersey they're wearing. Exactly. The source, the Lamest show on Earth, uses this fascinating metaphor. It suggests that Epstein offers a lens through which to view larger networks of power and influence. I really want to dig into that image for a second. A lens. Because a lens doesn't create the image, right? It just focuses it. It brings it into sharp relief. It brings things into focus that were already there, just blurry. When you look through the Epstein lens, you don't see Democrats or Republicans. You see a network that operates to protect its own. You see a system where, regardless of political affiliation, the number one priority is self preservation and the maintenance of that access we talked about. So the fact that files about Trump were allegedly deleted and files about Clinton were delayed for years, it's not about them as individuals necessarily. It suggests that the mechanism of the state works to shield the executive period. Not the man, but the office and the immense power that's associated with it. It's almost like the names don't matter as much as the mechanism itself. The mechanism of protection is an immune system for the elite. When a virus or a scandal threatens the host, the immune system kicks in and attacks the information. It tries to delete the virus. That's a very, very apt analogy. And that mechanism relies entirely on controlling the flow of information, releasing some files, deleting others. It keeps the public off balance. It keeps us arguing about your guy versus my guy, while the network itself remains completely intact. Right. If we're busy fighting over whether Trump or Clinton is worse, we aren't asking the bigger question, which is why the Department of Justice, an institution that exists, you know, ostensibly to serve the people, is allegedly deleting evidence involved in a federal sex trafficking investigation. That's the bigger crime. The COVID up is always the thing that reveals the rot underneath. And here's where it gets really interesting for me, because if we accept that Epstein isn't just a glitch in the system, if he's not some random billionaire who went rogue, but a feature, a lens, as you said, then he can't possibly be the only one. The physics of this just don't allow for a single anomaly. Oh, he certainly isn't. And that is where this concept of pattern recognition becomes so vital. If you really want to understand Epstein, you have to look at the parallel cases. You have to look at where else we see this specific toxic cocktail of charisma, coercion and cash. Exactly. Now, for anyone who might have missed it or who maybe just saw the headlines and thought, oh, that crazy cult. We have a source here that describes it very bluntly. It calls nxivm, a sex culture that was recently in the news. And the name of the center of it, Keith Rainier. Keith Raniere. Now, on the surface, Rainier and Epstein look completely different. Epstein was the high finance guy, the jet setter with the island. Right. Rainier was up in Albany, New York, running what looked like a kind of nerdy self help group. He wore jeans and T shirts. He played volleyball late at night. He looked harmless. Right. He didn't look like a Bond villain. He looked like your high school guidance counselor. But you have to look at the structure in our source material. The dialogue compares Rainier to Epstein explicitly. They both built these massive, complex structures. But what were those structures really doing? Well, with Epstein, it was money management for billionaires. He was the guy who could make your money grow, or you Know, hide it or move it around the world. He provided a service. And with ANS ivm, it was executive success programs, esp. It was all about optimizing your potential. Becoming the best version of yourself. Exactly. In both cases, the abuse was masked by a legitimate, even a high status act. Self improvement. They built these elaborate structures of abuse that were camouflaged by the very things our society values most, generating wealth and personal growth. That's so insidious. You don't question the billionaire financier and you certainly don't question the guru who is helping you break through your barriers. And the source mentions they both involved, quote, disgusting people who are operating with a shocking level of impunity for years and years. But I want to talk about how. Because you don't just get to do this for decades without a toolkit. There has to be a mechanism of control. You need leverage. You need leverage. In nxivm, they had something they called collateral. Right? This was just chilling. To move up the ranks in the secret society within nxivm, it was called dos. Women had to provide this collateral. And this wasn't just a promise. It was tangible. No, it was nude photos, deeply damaging confessions. They had to write about their families, financial information signing over deeds to houses. And the idea was, if they tried to leave or expose Raniere, he would release the collateral. It was blackmail. Institutionalized as a commitment ceremony. Now, compare that to Epstein. What do we hear about? We hear about the black book of contacts. We hear persistent rumors of tapes. We hear about cameras being installed in every single room of his properties, from the mansions to the island. It's the exact same mechanic. It's collateral. Epstein's operation wasn't just about trafficking for his own gratification. It was about compromising powerful people. If I have you on tape doing something illegal or, you know, deeply immoral, I own you. Just like Rainier owned those women with their collateral. Scale was different, of course. Epstein was allegedly compromising princes and presidents. Raniere was compromising actresses and heiresses. But the sociology of it is identical. It's a protection racket. At its core it is. And the source notes that this impunity, this leverage, is what allows them to operate for years. Why didn't anyone stop Rainier earlier? Because people were terrified of their collateral being released. Why didn't anyone stop Epstein? Because he might have had the tapes. So the outer shell, the business, the finance, the self help, it provides this shield of plausibility. But the blackmail, the collateral that provides the steel reinforcement, it's a cover Story that everyone wants to believe, backed up by essentially a gun to the head. And that leads us to this fascinating concept from our source. This is a live exercise. It talks about using pattern recognition to weave a tapestry of truth. That's a very poetic way to put it. But I always get a little suspicious of poetic language when we're talking about, you know, serious crimes. What does that actually mean in practice? I think it means that if you view these cases in isolation, if you look at Epstein as just one weird anomaly and NXIVM as just some crazy cult up in Albany, you completely miss the bigger picture. You miss the tapestry. You miss the tapestry. You think, wow, what a crazy coincidence that these two things happen. But it's not a coincidence. The source argues that the timeline of these events strongly suggests a false narrative is often fed to the public. So the story we get on the nightly news, you know, bad man caught, justice served, that's the sanitized version. It's the disconnected version. It portrays them as lone wolves, as singular monsters. But when you start to weave the tapestry, you see they are part of a pack. Or maybe more accurately, they're all using the exact same playbook. The source emphasizes that individuals have to dig for themselves. They have to file the Freedom of Information act request. They have to find the videos, look at the flight logs. They have to see the real timeline to understand that these are not isolated incidents. They are expressions of the same underlying sociology of power and abuse. So it requires active participation from us, from the observers. We can't just sit back and be told the story. We have to be willing to look for the pattern. And that pattern is often very, very ugly. It forces us to ask some really uncomfortable questions, like why does society tolerate a Keith Rainier or a Jeffrey Epstein for decades? Well, the answer you usually get is, well, because they didn't break the law or it wasn't violent. And that right there brings us to the intellectual heavy lifting of this deep dive. We have a source here from Professor David Sklansky titled A Pattern of Violence. And I have to say, this really shifted my entire perspective because we usually think of violence in very simple terms. A punch in the face, a gunshot, a stabbing, right? It's physical. If I walk down the street and someone tackles me to steal my wallet, that's violence. If someone pickpockets my wallet without me feeling it, that's deft. It seems pretty clear cut. Klansky really challenges that fundamental assumption. He argues that the word violence is used in the legal system not just as a Description of an act, but as a master category. A master category. Okay, explain that. What does that mean? It's a sorting mechanism. Yeah. A bureaucratic label that we use to sort people. We use the label violent criminal to distinguish between the people we think might deserve some mercy or rehabilitation and the people who deserve to be locked away forever and have the key thrown away. Right. You hear it from politicians all the time, constantly. We need to get violent criminals off the street. Violent offenders need mandatory minimums. If you are labeled violent, you are essentially beyond the pale. You are a monster, not a person who made a mistake. Okay, I follow that. But here's the paradox. And this is what really kept me up last night reading this. What Epstein did caused immense, immense trauma. We're talking about underage girls. We're talking about lifelong psychological scarring. I don't think anyone would argue that what he did wasn't profoundly destructive. Absolutely not. It was horrific. Was he treated as a violent criminal by the legal system for most of his career? No, not at all. And that is the absolute crux of Sklonsky's argument. He says the distinction the law makes between violent and nonviolent crime is often incredibly blurry and subjective. The law, as it's written really struggles to categorize things like dominance and control as a form of violence. Walk me through that. So if I'm a billionaire and I use my wealth and my private island and my network of powerful friends to coerce someone into a room, I haven't punched them. I haven't held a knife to their throat. So the law looks at that and says what? Historically, the law often says that is coercion or harassment or solicitation. But it hasn't treated that with anywhere near the same severity as the violent mugging in the alley. Even though the psychological damage, the trauma, might be identical or in many cases, far, far worse. I mean, think about the feminist legal reforms around rape and domestic violence. Over the last 30 or 40 years, the entire movement has been trying to convince the legal system that dominance is a form of violence, that controlling someone's finances, isolating them from their family, gaslighting them until they don't know what's real, that that constitutes violence. But the system is still stuck on this very narrow physical definition. It is largely. Sklansky suggests, that this narrow definition is what allows people like Epstein to slip right through the cracks. Their violence doesn't look like street crime. It's clean. It looks like a business transaction. It looks like a party. It happens in a mansion with nice Art on the walls, not in a dark alleyway. It's almost like if it doesn't look like a poor person's crime, we have a really hard time calling it violence. Precisely. And Sklansky goes even further into the gender dynamics of this. He discusses this deep seated expectation of violence in Masculin. The source notes this idea that the capacity for violence is ennobling in certain contexts. Ennobling. That's a really strong word. It is. But think about how we talk about leaders. We like a tough leader. We admire a CEO who makes ruthless decisions to boost the stock price. We want a general who is aggressive on the battlefield. In the powerful, the capacity for dominance is often seen as a virtue. We call it strength. But if a guy on the street corner is aggressive, he's a menace to society. Exactly. The legal system treats the violent offender, who is usually from a lower socioeconomic background, as a savage, someone who needs to be caged. But when a powerful man exerts that same kind of dominance, we hesitate to use the word violent. We call him assertive or powerful or a shark. So applying this directly to Epstein and Maxwell, this double standard essentially gave them a kind of camouflage. Absolutely. Did their wealth, did their sophisticated high society method of operation, the grooming, the gifts, the veneer of opportunity, did that allow them to evade the violent criminal label for so long? Did it allow them to slip through the cracks of a system that is designed to catch thugs rather than predators and suits? I think the answer is an undeniable yes. The 2008 plea deal in Florida. That's the perfect example. The perfect example. He was given work release. He was treated with kid gloves. Would a violent street criminal accused of the same crimes have gotten that deal? Never in a million years. That is a terrifying thought. That our very definition of the crime is what allowed the criminal to escape justice. It means the law isn't blind. It's just looking for a specific costume. And if you're not wearing it, you might get away with it. And Count Clansky brings up this idea of systemic blindness. He discusses how police violence, something like stop and frisk, for example, often isn't categorized as violence in the legal sense because it is state sanctioned. It's just procedure. Right. It's not violence. Even if it hurts you, even if it traumatizes you? Exactly. So you just draw the parallel. Was the abuse in Epstein's circle not categorized as violence by the other elites because it happened within their own sanctioned circles? Because it happened on the private island, on the private jet, within the Club? Was it just seen as an acceptable, if distasteful, part of their world? It's like violence with a permit or violence with a VIP pass, or violence with a veneer of civility and champagne. And that veneer protects it from the same scrutiny we would apply to a crime on the street. The system protects the system. So if the system is designed to protect its own, and if the very definitions of the words we use are flexible, well, we have to talk about how the story ends. Because if the ultimate goal is protection of the network, the ending has to be conclusive. We have to talk about how Jeffrey Epstein died. We do. And again, this is a place where you have to put aside the conspiracy theory label and just look at the actual forensic questions that have been raised by credible sources. We have a source here from Liberty Roundtable, and it's pretty explicit. It brings up forensic evidence that directly contradicts the official suicide ruling. Specifically, it details the claim made by the forensic pathologist, Dr. Michael Baden. Now, Dr. Baden isn't some random person on the Internet. He's a renowned pathologist. He was hired by Epstein's brother to observe the autopsy, and he observed, quote, burst capillaries in his eyes. And for those of us who aren't pathologists, can you break that down? Why does that one detail matter so much? Why is that a potential smoking gun in forensic science? Burst capillaries in the eyes, they're called petechiae, are caused by a sudden, intense buildup of pressure in the head. This is extremely common in cases of manual strangulation when someone is squeezing the neck. Okay. It is much less common in a typical hanging suicide, especially one from a low height. Like a prison bunk bed. Yeah. Dr. Baden is using the physical evidence, the biology of the body itself, to point toward homicide. He's essentially saying the body tells a very different story than the official report. So you have physical evidence from a respected expert that suggests foul play. But then on top of that, you also have the issue of the surveillance. And this is the part where I just get stuck. Because in 2019, in a maximum security federal facility, how do multiple cameras just malfunction at the same time? And the same source mentions an even more specific and, frankly, more chilling detail. It's not just about the night he died. The source notes that the surveillance video from Epstein's first supposed suicide attempt, which was weeks before his death, that footage was erased. Erased. Just like the DOJ files we were talking about earlier. It fits the pattern, doesn't it? Evidence appearing and then disappearing files Being deleted, video being erased. This isn't just incompetence. Incompetence is random. If it was just incompetence, maybe the camera would be blurry or it would be pointing the wrong way. But erased, that implies an action. That implies a keystroke. Someone had to do that. It just makes you wonder. I mean, if you're a listener trying to piece this all together, why are there so many irregularities? One irregularity, okay, maybe two is a coincidence. But we have deleted DOJ files, erased prison tapes, guards who fell asleep, other guards who were transferred, and a hyoid bone break that is more consistent with strangulation. It's a mountain of irregularities. It connects right back to that pinpoint source and lens metaphor. If the DOJ is deleting files that are potentially embarrassing to the powerful, and the Bureau of Prisons is erasing video, is that erasure part of the same mechanism? Is it that lens of power operating to obscure the truth? Is the system removing the virus to save the host and the tragedy of it? The real human cost of all of this is highlighted in our source. What vanished with Epstein. Because while we sit here and debate the forensics and the patterns, the victims are left standing in the cold. Yes, the source gives us that brutal reminder. Victims won't have their day in court. That's the part that just hits so hard. Because regardless of how he died, suicide, murder, assisted suicide, whatever you believe, his death served a function. It served to shut down the process. It denied any possibility of closure. And crucially, whether it was suicide or murder, the death served to protect the patterns we've been discussing. It stopped the testimony. It stopped the naming of names in a court of law, under oath. It prevented any cross examination. It protected the network. Dead men tell no tales. And they certainly don't cut plea deals to expose their powerful friends. It preserved the status quo. The club remained closed for business. So we have a system that seems rigged to protect these people. We have evidence that just vanishes into thin air. We have definitions of violence that don't seem to apply to the rich. But I want to pivot now to the psychology of all this. Because these networks, they're not machines. They're made of people. They require accomplices. They require silence from the pilots, the maids, the assistants, the so called friends. They require complicity on a massive scale. Right? And my question is why? Why do people go along with it? Why does the pilot fly the plane knowing who's on board and what's likely happening? Why does the assistant book the massage we have some fascinating psychological research here. One source is called Identity and moral wiggle Room. This is a crucial concept, moral wiggle room. It explains so much about human behavior. Not just in this case, but in general. I love that phrase. It sounds like a dance move or something, but I know it's not. Give me a simple real world example. How do I use moral wiggle room in my daily life? Okay, simple example. Imagine you're walking down the street and you see a homeless person. You have cash in your pocket. You know on a moral level they need help and you can provide it. But you tell yourself, oh, I'm in a rush or someone else will probably help them, or my personal favorite, they'll just spend it on drugs or alcohol. You create a narrative that excuses you from the moral obligation to help. That space you create between what you should do and what you do, that is the wiggle room. So if I can find a way to do the selfish thing in this case, keep my money, but make it look like I didn't have a choice or make the situation ambiguous, I'll almost always take the selfish route. The research shows that generous or moral behavior declines significantly when individuals have an opportunity to choose a self interested outcome and not be seen as selfish. It's all about plausible deniability, mostly to yourself. Okay, now apply that to Epstein's circle. Think about the staff on the island or in the mansions. They saw young girls coming and going. They saw the massages. But if they could find a way to interpret what they saw as not my business or well, maybe she's 18, she just looks young. Or I'm just the pilot. I'm just here to fly the plane. I don't ask questions. That is moral wiggle room. It allows them to prioritize their self interest. It allows them to prioritize their paycheck, their access to this incredible world, their proximity to power. Prioritize all of that over the moral imperative to stop what they know is abuse. So it allows them to sleep at night while enabling a monster. They aren't bad people in their own heads. They're just doing a job. And this is reinforced by another powerful psychological force in group bias. We have a source here assessing the effects of local social norms that talks about collective guilt and blame. Yes, the research on this is very clear. It shows that people assign blame very differently based on group membership. We're much, much more forgiving of people we consider one of us. This goes back to that close other versus stranger dynamic. Correct. We have another source. Adult age Differences in reactions to sociomoral violations. And it highlights this perfectly. We judge strangers incredibly harshly. If a stranger commits a crime, we want justice. We want the book thrown at them. But we are far more lenient toward our close others, our friends, our family, our colleagues, even when they commit intentional harm. So to the elite social circles of New York and London and Palm Beach, Jeffrey Epstein wasn't a stranger. He wasn't the other. He was a close other. He was in the club, he was at the dinner parties, he was donating to the charities. He was an in group member. So when the rumors started flying, or even when things became an open secret, as people called it, their fundamental psychological bias would be to minimize it, to interpret it charitably, to say, oh, that's just Jeffrey being Jeffrey, or he just likes young women, because to truly condemn him would be to condemn one of their own, which psychologically reflects poorly on the entire group. If he is a monster and he is my friend, what does that make me? It is psychologically so much easier to deny the monstrosity than it is to accept the guilt of your own association. That explains so much. It explains the decades of silence. It explains why it took so long for the dominoes to finally fall. They weren't just protecting him. They were protecting their own reflection in the mirror. And that protection continues even after death. Which leads us to the really strange cultural afterlife of this case. Because when the system fails so spectacularly to provide justice, the culture starts to. Well, it starts to glitch. We have to talk about the ghouls n ghosts, because this story has gotten weird. It's moved from the courtroom to the campfire. It has absolutely bled into modern folklore. We have a Source here, episode 120, Happy Halloweed, and it mentions podcast hosts using a Ouija board to try to speak to Jeffrey Epstein's ghost. A Ouija board to contact Jeffrey Epstein. I know it sounds completely ridiculous, it sounds like a joke. But I want to take it seriously for just a second. Why are people doing that? Why are we as a culture trying to summon his ghost? It speaks to the profound vacuum of facts when the legal system fails to provide a definitive conclusion, when the trial doesn't happen, when the videos are erased, when the files are deleted, the public is left with a void, a massive black hole where the truth should be. And nature abhors a vacuum. So we fill that void with ghost stories. We do. Our source, the Violence Project, references a CNN column that talks about the puzzle around Epstein's suicide. He calls it a puzzle and Human beings hate unfinished puzzles. Yeah. We have a deep cognitive need for closure. We have this compulsive need to put that last piece in. And if the last piece is missing, we'll try to carve our own. Even if we have to manufacture that piece out of conspiracy theories, or in this case, the supernatural. The lack of answers forces the blanks. Sometimes that leads to brilliant investigative journalism, which is good. Sometimes it leads to wild, dangerous conspiracy theories. And sometimes, apparently, it leads to Ouija boards. It's a desperate grasp for an answer that the state refused to give us. It's a symptom of a completely broken narrative. We don't trust the official ending, so we're trying to write our own. We try to envy the ghost because the man wouldn't talk. And that, I think, is the ultimate tragedy of the erasure we discussed earlier. By deleting the files and erasing the tapes, the system didn't just hide the truth. It fractured our shared reality. It created a world where ghosts and folklore now compete with facts because the facts themselves were deliberately hidden away. It eroded trust in the very concept of justice. So where does that leave us? We've covered a lot of ground today. We've gone from the Maxwell files all the way to the psychology of the elite. We have? Yeah. And the picture that emerges is. It's grim. But it's absolutely necessary to see it clearly. We've established that EP Skin wasn't an anomaly. He was part of a pattern that clearly includes cases like nxivm. We've seen how the legal definition of violence can be twisted to protect the powerful. How a billionaire's coercion is somehow treated differently than a mugger's knife. And we've seen how evidence from videotapes in a prison to files in the Department of Justice has a very strange habit of disappearing when it threatens immune system of the elite. And we've seen how our own psychology, things like moral wiggle room and in group bias, enables the silence that allows these patterns to persist for decades. It's not just about one bad man. It's about a society that was willing to look away because it was convenient or profitable or just plain easier. Next time, what's still hidden? Sealed documents, redacted names, classified materials. Will it ever come out? That's next time on the Epstein Files. You have just heard an analysis of the official record. Every claim, name and date mentioned in this episode is backed by primary source documents. You can view the original files for yourself at Epsteinfiles fm. If you value this data. First approach to journalism. Please leave a five star review wherever you're listening right now. It helps keep this investigation visible. We'll see you in the next file.