What we are seeing with the latest release from the Epstein files is not a breakthrough, but a burial. As of January 30, 3.5 million pages are now public, but no prosecutions, reforms, or consequences have come with them. This is not an accident. The release has been carefully separated from real justice, trying to exhaust our attention and energy instead of mobilizing it. The scandal is not just what names appear in these files, but that appearing in them is not enough to trigger consequences.
Epstein’s case shows how power operates in our country. The justice system does not function the same way for everyone. For the rich and politically connected, crimes are inconsequential, and the law is not a threat, but a shield. Epstein benefited from extraordinary plea deals and the reluctance to pursue the full extent of his crimes. This is often described as a failure of the system, but in reality it is nothing more than the system working as designed: protecting elites while maintaining the appearance of legality.
At the center of the case is the abuse of young women and girls. It was organized, sustained, and protected at every level. Victims were treated as disposable commodities, where money and reputation hid perpetrators from scrutiny. What made the abuse possible was not just one man’s behavior, but the network of relationships that normalized and protected it.
Women and girls were harmed not only by direct violence, but by the systematic devaluation of their lives. Survivors were not believed, were ignored, or were pressured into silence. Even now, the emphasis seems to remain on which powerful men appear in the files rather than on what justice for survivors would actually require and look like. Exposure without consequences is not accountability, it is just spectacle.
The files are filled with powerful people. Names like Donald Trump appear repeatedly, and we should all rightfully be outraged by the presence of his name there. Any society that takes justice seriously would treat this as a scandal with real consequences. But Donald Trump still sits in the White House and Howard Lutnick is still the Secretary of Commerce, when they should both have already been removed from their perches of power and probably imprisoned for life for their many crimes against not only young women but working-class people in general. The very fact that they haven’t even dreamed of stepping down and they haven’t been arrested shows that there will be no justice under the current system. And even if they were to be punished for their crimes, stopping at individual names and even a few high profile arrests misses the larger point.
The Epstein case shows how the ruling class uses every part of the system – from the courts to the media to favors from other wealthy friends – to protect themselves. No righteous special prosecutor or justice department could end these horrors and make things right for the victims. Justice will not come from the top. It will come from organizing and collective action that reshape who has power in our society and make impunity impossible.
If we want justice for survivors, we cannot rely on the same institutions that allowed abuse to continue for years. And if we want a world where networks like this cannot exist in the first place, we need to fight for a deeper change. That means organizing as working people to challenge a system that is totally built on inequality, exploitation, and disposable lives. The goal is not just to stop one scandal, or punish one set of abusers, but to build a society where this kind of abuse can never happen again.
