The Epstein Files flop: Sound and fury with little substance

My name appears in the ­Epstein Files — but it’s not because I was pals with the notorious dead predator.I’m just a reporter whose work made its way to his inbox.But even if I had cozied up to the creep, would that mean I was guilty of being part of a child-sex ring?No, it wouldn’t, and that gets to the real problem with all things Jeffrey Epstein.Like all the investigative work before it, the Epstein Files were supposed to give us at least a lead into a child-sex ring of the rich and powerful — not whether rich and powerful men befriended Epstein because of his money and connections — including his connections to highly attractive adult women.Indulgence in the latter isn’t much of a crime.

If it were, a major chunk of corporate America’s C-suite would be in jail, along with vast swaths of our political class.Former New York “Love Gov” Eliot Spitzer, who famously resigned from office for sex with an adult prostitute, would be in the clink instead of managing real estate.And that’s where The Epstein Files fall short: So far they prove nothing of real substance regarding why they were released in the first place — a supposed roadmap to a child-sex ring involving not just one perv but others among the rich and famous.I say “so far” because who knows what evidence lurks out there.

But all we have now is lots of sound and fury signifying very little of substance, other than that Epstein was a perv and the rich and powerful were willing to overlook it for various reasons.And this is why, so far, no one but Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell have been charged.Remember how the whole thing started.

Epstein’s pleading guilty to just a single count of sex with an underage prostitute meant the government must have had a nefarious reason to cut him a sweetheart deal and set him free after spending barely a year in jail, most of it on work release.Forget that he hired a dream team of lawyers who promised to go scorched earth on witnesse...