Epstein isn’t the scandal. We are.

Ghislaine Maxwell and her father, Robert Maxwell

We clamor for the release of Epstein’s emails, but we already know what they’ll show: powerful men sexually abuse girls. What we’re avoiding is this: the U.S. government trafficked children as an intelligence operation, and we—the electorate—have spent two decades protecting everyone who made that possible.

Jeffrey Epstein was a fired prep school teacher with no college degree who briefly worked at Bear Stearns, where he remained undistinguished and replaceable. Up to 1991, he was nobody.

That changed when Robert Maxwell died.

Robert was not simply a media mogul. He moved through the highest levels of political, financial, and intelligence circles across multiple countries. When he died, he received an Israeli state funeral attended by the Prime Minister, the President, and multiple current and former heads of intelligence—an extraordinary honor for a man officially described as a publisher.

Ghislaine Maxwell was the youngest of his nine children. Her mother devoted herself to recreating the family Robert lost in the Holocaust. She was Robert’s partner running The Pergamon Press until 1961, when Ghislaine was born. Two days later, Ghislaine’s teenage brother was in a car accident that left him in a coma for seven years.

From that point forward, Ghislaine was raised almost exclusively within her father’s orbit. She was his favorite. Court documents and her mother’s autobiography document that Ghislaine was anorexic even as a toddler, a condition widely associated with control, deprivation, and sexual trauma. Robert named his yacht after her. She was not permitted to be seen publicly with boyfriends until after college—only with him. After graduation, they were inseparable.

Shortly before his death, Robert introduced Ghislaine to Jeffrey Epstein.

Viewed socially or professionally, this introduction makes no sense. Robert traveled among heads of state. Epstein had no credentials, no connections, no power. The introduction only makes sense if Robert was being replaced.

A successor to an intelligence asset would need familiarity with finance but no institutional backing, no independent power base, and a demonstrated willingness to commit serious crimes. Epstein met those criteria. His sexual abuse of underage girls was not a liability. It was leverage.

In 1991, Ghislaine transferred her loyalty to Epstein and, with it, access to Robert’s network. Within a year, billionaire Les Wexner granted Epstein power of attorney over his finances. No one has ever explained why.

From this point forward, everyone benefited except the victims. State actors preserved their assets and connections. Epstein got money, protection, and access to girls; Ghislaine got a father replacement. The cost was borne entirely by trafficked children.

In 2008, despite testimony from at least 36 underage victims, U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta dropped all but two minor charges against Epstein. Acosta later acknowledged the non-prosecution agreement was unprecedented. He also stated he was instructed to do so by someone whose authority he could not override.

Who outranks a U.S. Attorney?

The identity of that person has never been disclosed. No law was broken. No accountability followed. We protect the answer to that question.

We re-elected officials who classified the trafficking as “national security.” We confirmed judges who ruled those classifications unreviewable. We voted for both parties while both parties protected this person’s identity. We have not even made these actions illegal.

What did we think “intelligence operations” meant?

Public obsession with Epstein’s files is misdirected. We are not going to discover that powerful men behave badly—we already know that. We are not going to be shocked by any name in those documents. The behavior was visible long before the paperwork.

Epstein was not a rogue genius. He was a sociopath willing to do anything for sex and money. Ghislaine Maxwell was not a mastermind. She was a victim of childhood sexual abuse who replicated that abuse as an adult.

The mastermind was our government.

As voters, we claim national security justifies any crime if the victims are invisible. We let “classified” mean “unaccountable.” We tell ourselves this is too distant to confront.

But it isn’t distant. And the most disturbing part of the Epstein scandal is not what happened—it is that we make it legal.

Democracy requires identifying with the victims of unchecked power. We refuse to do that here. So instead, we wait for more documents, more names, more spectacle—anything that lets us avoid responsibility for building the system that made those emails inevitable.