I have a concept of why the administration and DOJ have flip flopped several times on the Epstein narrative. Going from "we have the (unseen) files" to "Epstein had absolutely nothing weird or unseemly going on and the poor billionaire chap killed himself in jail and stop asking questions it's unpatriotic and MAGA MAGA MAGA."

I think it's like this.

1) Actual Epstein clientele no doubt extends to the top levels of business and government. People at the rungs immediately below, say, Jamie Dimon. CEOs and presidents of corporations that many of us would recognize.

2) Actual disclosure of Epstein material would create an *imperative* to prosecute. Take a fictitious example. Suppose (say) Mark Cuban was implicated. There would be a good sized contingent of citizens who would demand that Mark Cuban be brought up for charges and detained until trial. And by definition any substantial evidence of serious crimes demands a grand jury. To simply ignore documented evidence of crimes is not permitted in our system. And there would be a TON of momentum in favor of prosecution.

3) Now imagine all of these (probably a few dozen) CEOs and politicians being hauled out of their occupations running a large chunk of the US economy, and placed in confinement or house arrest until trial. They're ALL flight risks because of their wealth.

4) Trials would literally take years. There are probably not enough venues for trial in the US to process that many case, so the cases would be serialized, a few at a time.

5) Meanwhile: a large part of the US economy and some of the federal and some state governments have been decapitated. "Decapitated" in the cold war military planning sense of top level command and control being cut off. Of course every large business will have a succession plan for the CEO. But still you have a huge disruption in day to day operation of the countrfy.

I basically believe that factual disclosure of the Epstein list and the biggest violaters would immobilize the US economically and politically. "He raped 11 year olds? Well, you must indict." Repeated perhaps 50 times or more with some of the most influential people in the country.

This is what I think the functional impact would be. There would of course be a cultural revulsion and reaction that would make politics and culture more toxic than it is now.

I believe the non disclosure and denial of Epstein is a pragmatic, not principled choice and probably comes from Trump's level... or above.

In other words justice can't be properly served without cratering the US system. Therefore the facts have to stay buried.

I hope this logic didn't bore anyone here and you actually engaged with the idea in order to comment on topic and not just blabber about what scum Bongino and Patel are.