This story still matters not only because Jeffrey Epstein has escaped justice, but also because it points to an even larger and still-relevant question: how rotten is our elite?

International man of mystery and all-around dirtbag, Jeffrey Epstein, died just over two weeks ago at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a high-security federal detention center that rivals Guantanamo Bay in its unpleasantness. The institution that safely housed infamous criminals like El Chapo and various members of al-Qaeda barely held on to Jeffrey Epstein for a month.

Epstein’s July 6 arrest and subsequent death made a lot of headlines. Now, two weeks after his death, the story has nearly disappeared.

An Improbable Suicide

Epstein died on August 10 and had a broken hyoid bone. This is, in the words of pathologists, more often indicative of death in a struggle, such as strangulation. But New York City Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson concluded it was suicide. The New York Times reported that her report conclusively disposed of “a wave of unfounded conspiracy theories” that he may have been killed. You see, when an official says something, that’s the end of the discussion. Homicides are never mistaken for suicides. Experts never disagree.

Consider the facts. Epstein was the most notorious prisoner in federal custody. No one has committed suicide at MCC since 1998. Epstein had attempted suicide once already and remained on suicide watch only for six days after his previous suicide attempt on July 23. Reports attributed to his team suggest that he was, in fact, attacked in that earlier incident. His cellmate was moved on the night of his death, and he was left alone. No video of the events in the hallway near his cell has been released, and the official account is that he was able to commit suicide because two officers fell asleep and falsified reports showing they completed their required rounds.

For 15 years, we have seen every moonbat 9/11 conspiracy theory treated with respect, including Michael Moore’s idiotic “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which the New York Times described as a “high-spirited and unruly exercise in democratic self-expression.” After years of every barista claiming expertise in metallurgy and fire science, now the prestige press want to make the mysterious death of Epstein—no video, no suicide watch, broken neck bones and all—off-limits. And their rhetorical technique is rather simple: the language of shame. You wouldn’t be one of those dumb “conspiracy theorists” would you?

One does not have to be a conspiracy theorist or even believe in a murder to find this story unconvincing and incomplete. While incompetence may explain everything, federal corrections officers and wardens are paid better and are typically of higher quality than those in the state system. Even dull bureaucrats know to look busy when the boss is watching. Apparently, no fewer than eight personnel were aware that Epstein was not supposed to be without a cellmate. But he was. And in this window of time, he supposedly killed himself. If this is how he died, it is the result of a remarkable series of coincidences.

A Long Trail of Inexplicable Solicitude

The Epstein story was rather fishy long before he committed suicide. After he was first arrested in Florida in 2006, this serial offender was treated with kid gloves, given only a year in prison, much of which he spent on work release, leaving each day to do whatever important and mysterious financial work he did for a living. He was picked up every day in a limousine. On at least one occasion he sex-trafficked an 18-year-old working at his “science foundation” while on this work release.

Someone convinced Alex Acosta, then the southern district of Florida U.S. attorney, and his deputies to go along with this and not pursue a federal prosecution. Records of the deal at first were sealed, in violation of Florida law. At his sentencing, victims were left in the dark, something also in violation of the law. Numerous emails of the U.S. attorneys’ conversations with Epstein’s defense counsel take the discussion offline, something that should not be necessary for a federal prosecutor.

When appointed secretary of labor, Acosta reportedly explained that he went along with this deal because Epstein “belonged to intelligence.” Which intelligence? Who said this? Since when does this matter to a federal prosecutor? And why was this pro-forma explanation treated as adequate?

Epstein’s Crimes Taint Many in the Elite

This story matters not only because Epstein’s crimes were serious and he has escaped justice, but also because it points to an even larger and still-relevant question: how rotten is our elite? Epstein’s connections extended to Harvard, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz, Microsoft, numerous scientists, financial elites, Hollywood stars, and likely many more people who have escaped scrutiny and are now sweating bullets hoping never to be exposed. And it was not only he who avoided justice, but many cooperated in rehabilitating this registered sex offender’s reputation, including Harvard, MIT, and even National Review.

In spite of its entanglement with Epstein, the elite continues to remain an elite. Epstein is a symptom of a broader crisis of moral authority and competence that includes things like the Enron scandal, the Maddoff fraud, Google’s intervention in national elections, Bill Clinton’s tarmac meeting with Loretta Lynch, the attorney general who was investigating his wife, and Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified material and her lies about her health issues in the latter part of her campaign. We live in an age where the Democratic Party’s front-runner previously ended a presidential campaign in disgrace due to plagiarism—an unthinkable bow to integrity among today’s corrupt elite.

The Congress that presumes to judge President Trump for uncouth jokes and bravado, for many years tolerated men who should have been in jail, like Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank, and Dennis Hastert. Far from being role models with a right to rule, these people are far beyond the norm in their deviance. Indeed, their proclivities render them putty in the hands of those with blackmail material in hand, as Hastert’s long-term payouts to one of his victims attest.

The elite extends beyond political leaders and Wall Street tycoons to include our sanctimonious media class and the Hollywood glitterati. These maintain their pomposity while delivering schoolmarm lectures to us proles, even as the likes of Bryan Singer, Kevin Spacey, and Harvey Weinstein are exposed as loathsome lechers, who, in some cases, targeted minors. We got some sense of their moral compass when so many of them rose in defense of child rapist Roman Polanski after his arrest ten years ago.

With Epstein, all of the branches of the elite have circled the wagons. The Clintons, who were hand-in-glove with Epstein and his procurer Ghisilane Maxwell, have spent the better part of the last three years lecturing the rest of us about how deplorable we are and how our pristine governing class should not be sullied by Donald Trump and the retrograde views he expresses in solidarity with the common man.

Some have attempted to drag Trump into the Epstein mess, but this has gone nowhere. Trump’s ejection of Epstein from Mar-a-Lago suggests this is a vain hope for his haters. Trump is part of the elite, but, like FDR, mostly treated as a “traitor to his class,” not least in his championing of the working class so despised by the elite as atavistic and backward.

Does America’s Elite Deserve Its Power?

America’s governing elite, like all elites, have money and power. But the root of their supposed moral authority comes chiefly from having the correct and fashionable opinions, not virtue or courage or human excellence more broadly understood. The only requirement for remaining in the elite is the cheap virtue of affirming the elite’s basic world view on subjects like abortion, gay marriage, global warming, immigration, diversity, and the like.

They think they’re better than us, and they tell us they’re better than us, and the reason they think they’re better is that they hold the right opinions. They’re enlightened. They’re leading the way. They’re modern. They know we should eat bugs and call men women and all the rest. Kevin Williamson exemplified their tone in writing, “The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible.”

It is, in fact, our elite that is indefensible. It has failed in its job of providing effective, moral leadership. Instead, it has presided over an economic and moral collapse, well documented by Charles Murray in his work Coming Apart, and visible in the family courts, methadone clinics, and trashed cities across America. While it is hubristic, decadent, and short-sighted, the elite’s chief flaw is massive hypocrisy—Epstein is simply the most egregious example of it. We aren’t supposed to notice the concierge medicine for those who call for socialized medicine, nor the gated communities, doormen, and private schools for those who insist upon gun control and bussing middle-class students to the ghetto to experience the wonders of diversity.

The elite’s power is amplified by its relative fluidity. That is, there is an even greater number among the aspiring middle class who ape their style and opinions, complete with the NPR tote bags, in the hopes of joining the elite’s ranks or having their children do so. These aspirants function quite effectively as the unpaid palace guard of the elite, defending the elite’s right to rule and heaping contempt and other sanctions upon those who won’t get in line. They’re the Twitter snitches and human resources apparatchiks who make sure everyone toes the party line.

The Epstein news blackout is a product of these lackeys. Their silence is deafening. We’re told through this silence to go back to business as usual. Everything’s fine, don’t look behind the curtain. We’re in good hands. Trust the people who let him die or—how could you think such a thing—killed him.

Even after Epstein’s arrest, we only saw the simulation of an investigation. Little St. James, more commonly known as Pedophile Island, was raided by the FBI only after his death. A computer went missing in the meantime. This was only discovered by an ambitious, private drone pilot who flew repeatedly over the island during Epstein’s brief tenure at MCC.

Ludicrously, as of today, Epstein’s New Mexico and Palm Beach properties still have not been raided and searched by the authorities. Epstein apparently commanded a certain loyalty from his staff, as the flag flew at half-mast on Pedophile Island after his death. Someone loyal to him removed that computer. Likely similar cover-up activity happened in New Mexico and in Florida. This all has been allowed to happen due to the lethargic pace of the investigation. Now we may never know the full truth, and the casual investigation suggests this is all by design.

A lot of people wanted Epstein dead, including anyone who took part in his debauched sexual exploits. Now his secrets, to the extent they are not immortalized on tape or some other record, are going with him.

Did he off himself? Maybe, but if that is what happened, it was something that was permitted to happen. When there is this much motive, the situation calls for a deeper look.

The indifference of the federal government and Palm Beach authorities since the start of this caper, beginning with Acosta and extending through the failure to search Epstein’s properties after his death, suggest that if Epstein was not murdered, no one tried particularly hard to stop it. Along these lines, Maxwell continues to be on the loose, as do Epstein’s other female enablers.

Justice and Exposure Are the Only Paths Forward

Part of my perspective on this case is informed by my painful experience and shame as a Roman Catholic who has learned of the Church’s many sexual abuses, particularly in the heady atmosphere following Vatican II. I watched over the last two decades as senior figures in the Church put their own reputations and their desire to avoid “scandal” above the need of justice for the victims of sexually abusive and pedophile priests, whose behavior can only be described as Satanic.

When the leadership of any organization becomes more interested in the appearance of justice than in actual justice, its reputation and justice itself are both casualties. The only solution, whether for America’s elite or for the Church, is to expose, condemn, and replace those who have failed. The Church has made some headway in this regard. But the news blackout on Epstein a mere week after his death suggests America’s ruling class—like certain quarters within the leadership of the Catholic Church—hopes we all just forget and continue to acquiesce to their leadership as if nothing happened and their authority is and should remain fully intact.

Not for a second. There is nothing holy or God-ordained about the political, economic, and media elites who have failed our society more generally and tolerated, covered up, and participated in Epstein’s crimes. They deserve, instead, to be exposed and dethroned completely.

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