# Will Jeffrey Epstein's "friends" face justice? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 4, 2020, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242 "2020-08-04T11:49:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/222 "2025-07-17T17:19:08Z")
Missed edit window. Forgot about Whitey Bulger! If ever there was a case that the FBI would have kept secret if they could it’s Whitey Bulger as he played them for suckers while running a violent criminal empire ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/223 "2025-07-17T17:43:35Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > The idea something this explosive could be kept completely secret without any details leaking, is not plausible That was then, this is now. You used to be able to break open your average safe with a spoon and carry weapons onto a plane. Journalists used to have budgets for a crew of guys and they could fly around all over the world and offer bribes. These days, you need specialized equipment to crack a safe and you can’t even take full sized bottle of toothpaste on a plane. Journalists are just people who move stuff from ChatGPT to the front-page, getting paid by article and view count, to try and afford a minimum wage lifestyle in Wisconsin. The only Trump tax return that has been leaked is the one that contained what seems likely to have been his best year in business. Most likely, he leaked it himself. Otherwise, bupkis. We’ve been told that there were dozens of girls who were picked up by Epstein. We know one of them and haven’t seen or heard bupkis from any of the others. Pam Bondi accepts that there’s tens of thousands of pages of documentation. We haven’t seen that. Things change. It’s speculative that things would leak. It’s not speculative that more documentation exists than has been released. The government admits as much. And while it’s mild speculation to decide precisely how much content that lands in at, publicly released information on victim and interview counts plus basic procedure do demand that it should have a certain size and scope, that doesn’t match what we’ve seen. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/224 "2025-07-17T17:50:49Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > That was then, this is now. Yeah but all those changes have made it far easier to leak not harder. If everything leaked in the days when it took actually photocopying something and mailing it to someone, its sure as hell going to leak when we are all connected to the Internet 24/7 ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/225 "2025-07-17T18:22:30Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > Yeah but all those changes have made it far easier to leak not harder. You’re free to give me the President’s 2018 tax return. Likewise, I suggest that you try to find the advance warning of the Stuxnet attack or Operation Trojan Field. To be sure, stuff can leak. Hackers do, sometimes, hit paydirt. But I’d venture to guess that your impression that security standards have lowered, as we’ve moved forward with time, are incorrect. Ultimately, it’s on you to make the case that the government is lying about the existence of more documents. If, as you say, they’d leak easily then I should have them. If I don’t and everything does leak easily, then those documents don’t exist. Why don’t they exist? Why would the government claim that they do? They should. So if they don’t then it would seem that they’ve been destroyed. If they’ve been destroyed, though, then - by your standard - _that_ information should have been leaked. But we also have no leaks that information has been destroyed. In general, your assertion seems to lead to a impossible state where we both have the documents, don’t have the documents, they have been destroyed, and they haven’t been destroyed. We should know the current status, but we don’t. Has everything been released or not? What is your answer? ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/226 "2025-07-17T18:36:04Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Stuxnet attack or Operation Trojan Field. What you mean those two operations where ALL THE DETAILS are now public domain?! Hell there is a HBO documentary featuring interviews with the actual NSA (who make the FBI look like the EFF in comparison) folks who wrote the stuxnet virus and a detailing exactly how Israel screwed it up by distributing it too widely: > **[Zero Days](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Days)** > > Zero Days is a 2016 American documentary film directed by Alex Gibney. It was selected to compete for the Golden Bear at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival. > Although the entire subject is still shrouded in secrecy, the film attempts to tell the story of the development, deployment, discovery, and investigation of the Stuxnet computer virus and the malware software known as "Olympic Games" in as much detail, and as accurately, as possible. It concludes with a discussion of the follow-u... Those cases make my point exactly. The idea that something like this could be kept completely secret really stretches the bounds of credulity to breaking point. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/227 "2025-07-17T18:44:36Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > What you mean those two operations where ALL THE DETAILS are now public domain?! Yes I want, as explicitly asked for, the unsanctioned, failure-causing leaks about the two operations where, now, some discrete set of purposefully chosen and released materials have been made available to the public. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/228 "2025-07-17T18:48:20Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Yes I want, as explicitly asked for, the unsanctioned, failure-causing leaks about the two operations where, now, some discrete set of purposefully chosen and released materials have been made available to the public. Errr ok. Watch the HBO documentary about it. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/229 "2025-07-17T18:48:48Z")
The HBO documentary was **leaked** in advance of the operation and totally blew its success? ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/230 "2025-07-17T18:59:43Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > **leaked** in advance of the operation and totally blew its success? No of course not. But I’m not saying Trump being run as an as an FBI informant and abusing children with Epstein in that capacity would have been blown _in advance_. It is conceivable it might have happened but if it did the FBI’s involvement would have come to light in the ensuing decades. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/231 "2025-07-17T19:04:16Z")
As I said elsewhere: maybe the people handling this at DOJ _ **don’t** _ think our interest in knowing overrides theirs in keeping things controlled —one way or the other— and _don’t care_ how _ **we** _ feel about it. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/232 "2025-07-17T19:15:46Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > As I said elsewhere: maybe the people handling this at DOJ _ **don’t** _ think our interest in knowing overrides theirs in keeping things controlled —one way or the other— and _don’t care_ how _ **we** _ feel about it Yeah i would not trust the current Trump appointed inhabitants of the DOJ to publicly distribute the fact 2+2=4, or know that fact. But if there is anything in the DOJ Epstein files it has been around for decades and in DOJ possession since at least 2019/20. I really doubt anything seriously damaging could be kept secret all that time. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/233 "2025-07-17T19:47:58Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > Is there actually any evidence that files containing significant further revelations exist? Or is it - as the author of the NYT article posits - simply a case of conspiracy theorists (amusingly on both sides of the Democrat/Republican divide) simply assuming that such material must exist because what has been released to date doesn’t confirm their assumptions? Yeah, this makes sense and it is odd that both political wings have taken "Epstein files’ to heart. > [@LSLGuy](#): > > What’s wanted is a logbook or diary, or better yet videos, detailing who did what to who when and where. With plenty of damning lurid details. Which is extremely unlikely as it would already have been used as evidence. > [@JRDelirious](#): > > But again , the terse “nothing to see here” was one of the worst possible ways to communicate it. Followed by “it’s all a hoax”. No matter what you released, conspiracy theorists will want more. Look at the Obama Birth certificate thing, Look at the JFK files. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/234 "2025-07-17T19:48:52Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > But I’m not saying Trump being run as an as an FBI informant and abusing children with Epstein in that capacity would have been blown _in advance_. The fact that we’re discussing it says that, to some extent, it has been “blown”. But, first, that’s hit and miss. We have plenty of stuff from the Cold War, for example, that’s only just coming out now, through completely above board means (i.e. not _leaks_ - authorized and legal disclosures of information are not leaks) which shows that a lot of stuff didn’t leak. The success of projects like Stuxnet and Trojan Shield say that the FBI and military can keep stuff under wraps for at least a period of years. The lack of a history of Trump’s tax returns, but one, says that Trump himself will leak to his own advantage but the IRS is able to keep stuff on the wraps for decades, successfully. Trump is 70 years old or something. He should have near 60 tax returns. He’s been successfully prosecuted for business fraud. 59 tax returns haven’t been released through any means and nearly all of those are older than a decade. So, while true that there are things which come out to the press in near real time (usually if a congressperson was involved), there’s no universal law on this, like you’re envisioning. Secondly, there’s the question of fulsomeness. Disclosures follow incentives. If you run a successful project to snare global criminals, and you need the voters to re-elect you, then you have an advantage to releasing that information. But likewise, if you want to be able to do it again, then you want to release as little detail as possible. You’d probably work backwards from what will become known to the criminals during the presentation of evidence at trial, to figure out a scope of information that’s allowable to release. All of that information is a) _not a leak_, and b) incomplete, by considered and deliberate design. W, the public, are not getting the vast majority of everything by a long shot and, likely, everyone that the press talks to will be reserving any information that would endanger a lot of people and technologies that have remained undisclosed. And were there operations that weren’t disclosed? I mean, every organized crime syndicate is, presumably, under investigation. If they’re still in business after a period of decades then… Where’s the leak? The ambassador of every foreign nation is, quite possibly, under US surveillance. The leader of every foreign nation is quite possibly under US surveillance. These are roles that, even if the person changes, the surveillance initiative will continue and the details should (?), according to you, leak to the press. So… Where’s all those phone calls between Obama and the President of Argentina? Maybe you might find a few details about a few but, again, that’s because Obama or that President decided to give some details to the press. There’s other stuff that they didn’t and that’s all material that _could_ be leaked. Decades have passed since then so… Where is it? I don’t personally expect to get it until after the death of all the parties involved. The US government will release boxes and boxes of transcripts to historians, maybe sometime in 2075. That’s protocol, not a _leak_. Most of everything is not leaked. Most leaks are authorized. You can read about internal FBI discussions by Comey, Andrew McCabe, and the legal department where they debate what information and how much of it they should “leak” (emphasis on the scare quotes) to the press. In essence, they’re preparing an official announcement - fully authorized, since it’s the decision of the Director of the FBI and he has the right to release some information - but delivered to the press with the understanding that it will be sourced as, “According to officials in the FBI” in a popular newspaper, rather than coming out as an official FBI press release. A real leak is something like what Chelsea Manning did. That’s fairly rare and, when it happens, it’s as a dump of raw documents (though still, potentially, trimmed down to a selective set - to protect people or to create a certain impression that may or may not be accurate). If we don’t have transcripts of Obama talking with the President of Argentina, and the FBI trying to hunt down the person that released that information, then there wasn’t a leak. Information can and does stay under wraps for decades. Nearly all of it. There’s, pretty certainly, tens of thousands of documents about Epstein that are being reserved. Those haven’t been Chelsea Manning-style leaked. What has been leaked says that there’s cause for concern that we don’t have more. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/235 "2025-07-17T20:08:23Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Trump is 70 years old or something. He should have near 60 tax returns. He’s been successfully prosecuted for business fraud. 59 tax returns haven’t been released 60 → 50 59 → 49 ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/236 "2025-07-17T21:20:02Z")
Trump is 79. Assuming he started filing taxes in his late teens or early 20s, then 60/59 is probably pretty close. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/237 "2025-07-17T21:28:42Z")
So it is. I believe that I also recall that the NYT was able, after many years, to peak at a few more tax returns than the one he “leaked” himself. But it was still not most of the returns, the returns had to get pulled in to the state fraud case and run through several hundred pairs of hands before there was a leak, and we only got a highlights, not a proper release. With enough effort, leaks **do** become more likely. But you need to create a sufficient environment of incentives and weakness. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/238 "2025-07-17T21:41:58Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > If you run a successful project to snare global criminals, and you need the voters to re-elect you, then you have an advantage to releasing that information. But likewise, if you want to be able to do it again, then you want to release as little detail as possible. To this point, it truly pained Eisenhower that he wasn’t able to squash the constant nagging by the press of a ‘missile gap’ with the Soviets because to do so would require him to disclose the existence of the U2 program, which he could not do for obvious reasons. And the argument that it’s harder keeping secrets in the internet age isn’t really born out by events. Israel executed a massive operation involving hundreds of exploding cell phones which were in the hands of Hamas leaders and operatives, then bombed a meeting place of Hamas leaders who met because their cell phones were compromised. Hell, just last month Ukraine sent a bunch of drones into Russia using 53-foot trailers, and not a single person glommed on to this (or got on the internet and blabbed) until 40% of Russian bombers went up in smoke. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/239 "2025-07-17T22:10:10Z")
Without trying to be a jerk I’ll take the perspective that @griffin1977 is flat wrong. The huge iceberg of shit that’s secret stays secret. The teeny trickle of stuff that gets out is the exception that proves the rule. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/240 "2025-07-17T23:46:07Z")
Just released by the _Wall Street Journal_: > [@](#): > > It was Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, and Ghislaine Maxwell was preparing a special gift to mark the occasion. She turned to Epstein’s family and friends. One of them was Donald Trump. > > Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens of Epstein’s other associates for a 2003 birthday album, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. > > … > > The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair. > > … > > The letter concludes: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.” > > In an interview with the Journal on Tuesday evening, Trump denied writing the letter or drawing the picture. “This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story,” he said. > > “I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” he said. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words.” > > He told the Journal he was preparing to file a lawsuit if it published an article. “I’m gonna sue The Wall Street Journal just like I sued everyone else,” he said. > > … > > It isn’t clear how the letter with Trump’s signature was prepared. Inside the outline of the naked woman was a typewritten note styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the third person. > > “_Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything,” the note began._ > > _Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is._ > > _Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is._ > > _Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey._ > > _Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it._ > > _Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?_ > > _Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you._ > > _Trump: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret._ [https://www.wsj.com/politics/trump-jeffrey-epstein-birthday-letter-we-have-certain-things-in-common-f918d796?st=NuWMEh&reflink=desktopwebshare\_permalink](https://www.wsj.com/politics/trump-jeffrey-epstein-birthday-letter-we-have-certain-things-in-common-f918d796?st=NuWMEh&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink) ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2025, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242/241 "2025-07-18T00:00:42Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > mimicking pubic hair I’ll take “Words You Never Want to See in a News Story About Yourself” for 200, Alex… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-jeffrey-epsteins-friends-face-justice/917242.md?page=13)