The Epstein Files Were Never About Truth — They Were About Political Theater

In the political rush to appear on the right side of history, the Epstein Files are rapidly becoming a case study in how moral outrage can outpace actual evidence. In the days leading up to the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Ro Khanna framed the law in apocalyptic terms, declaring that Jeffrey Epstein had operated a “rape island” where rich and powerful men abused young girls with total impunity, a claim co-signed by Thomas Massie and echoed, more quietly, by much of US Congress.

The problem is not that the allegation lacks emotional force, but that it carries extraordinary weight without, so far, extraordinary proof. The idea of a global elite trafficking network is politically irresistible, but it is also a claim that reshapes public trust in institutions, journalism, and the justice system itself, which makes evidentiary rigor not optional, but essential.

So far, the actual contents of the released files are telling a far more uncomfortable story, one that does not neatly align with the moral spectacle politicians appear to be selling. According to Associated Press, whose journalists reviewed the material alongside several other major media organisations, the FBI gathered overwhelming evidence that Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused underage girls, but found limited evidence that he ran a structured trafficking operation serving powerful men.

That distinction matters more than most political narratives admit. Epstein being a serial abuser is no longer in doubt. Epstein running an organised elite sex ring remains, at this stage, unproven. And while lawmakers only recently gained access to the redacted material, the early reporting suggests a widening gap between what the public was promised and what the documents currently support.

The political incentive structure is obvious. The Epstein Files were sold not just as transparency, but as reckoning. The law carries massive logistical, financial, and institutional costs, and both parties now face the same problem: if nothing dramatic emerges, the entire exercise begins to look less like justice and more like performative governance.

This is where the story shifts from Epstein himself to the behaviour of political systems. There is a deep bipartisan hunger for a morality play, one where someone powerful falls, someone symbolic is humiliated, and voters feel that hidden structures of privilege have finally been pierced. It is not enough that Epstein was guilty, there must be others, and ideally they must belong to the “other side”.

The danger is not that the truth will remain hidden, but that it will be replaced. When public expectations are inflated beyond what evidence can sustain, the eventual outcome is not accountability but cynicism. Every missing revelation becomes proof of a cover-up, every inconclusive document becomes confirmation of a conspiracy, and every absence of names becomes more politically useful than their presence.

The Epstein Files are increasingly functioning less as a legal archive and more as a psychological mirror. They reflect what society wants the story to be, not necessarily what the evidence currently supports. In that sense, the files have already succeeded politically, even if they ultimately fail judicially.

The real scandal may not be that powerful men escaped justice, but that political institutions built a narrative so grand that reality was never going to live up to it. And in modern politics, disappointment does not produce reflection, it produces even louder demands for spectacle.