BY PAUL T HORGAN
Ghislaine Maxwell, the Duke and Duchess of York, Peter Mandelson. Ask what all of these people have in common and the answer is obvious. All of them have been substantially negatively affected by the fallout of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. But that is not all.
All of them are, or were, British.
And yet we are told that Epstein was an American socialite, and his business interests were mainly in the USA. On the evidence that has emerged, an observer could have been forgiven for thinking that Epstein had infiltrated British society, in the manner of serial rapist Mohammed al-Fayed, and left American society well alone.
There is a rather distasteful explanation for why it seems that Brits are the main victims of their associations with Epstein, and that is that no Brit would be able to gain favour in an American court, especially if they are royalty. Consider the concept of a current member of the British Royal Family getting any objective outcome from a legal system established in direct opposition to one of their ancestors. The Romanov family would have a better chance in Putin’s Russia. Well, the surviving members of that family. And if they were useful friends of Putin. You get the idea.
But that does lead to another question. Why are leading Americans being protected from this scandal in a manner that is not extended elsewhere?
This is where the tinfoil hats may start to be worn. The USA is an exceedingly litigious society. Some argue that the USA is not actually a democracy, but a Constitutional Republic based on individual rights. But these rights have to be asserted by the individuals – sometimes in court – or they will be ignored. The outcome of this is that the actions of citizens, and also state authorities, are not governed by a sense of right or wrong, but instead by the likelihood of losing a court case.
So the tinfoil hat theory is that the elite American associates of Epstein are being protected quite successfully by a barrier of lawyers, this protection not being extended to anyone who is not American. True, others have been punished for their associations with Epstein who are not British, but these seem to be those who had professional associations with the paedophile in the world of finance. Former Barclays boss Jes Staley, an American, was banned by the Financial Conduct Authority from holding a senior position due to his associations with Epstein. But this is a sanction from a British regulator. Staley has not received any similar sanction by any US financial regulator.
What may also protect American high-profile former associates of Epstein, if they did not partake in his perversions, is the bright red line of his 2008 conviction. If a person, such as Mandelson or the Duke and Duchess, continued their association with Epstein after his conviction, then they did so in the full knowledge that the man was a monster who was using his wealth to commit outrages on girls.
In the case of Ghislaine Maxwell, she played a significant part in enabling the commission of the outrages. However, it is difficult to believe she was alone in this. Maxwell is a naturalised American citizen, but her British roots (she also holds French citizenship, having been born in France), seem to have led her to be the only person to be convicted for participation in Epstein’s criminal enterprise. Why?
The simple answer, the tinfoil hat answer, is that all the other participants were ‘proper’ American citizens. In 2019, just after Epstein’s death, the New York Times named four women, Sarah Kellen, Lesley Groff, Adriana Ross and Nadia Marcinkova, as co-conspirators, suggesting that they could also face charges. Well, it’s almost six years later. Nothing seems to have happened. Certainly the newspaper has not been sued for defamation, despite the litigious culture previously mentioned.
Instead, the media are pursuing Donald Trump. Yet Trump, unlike Mandelson, the Duke and Duchess, and Staley, severed his associations with Epstein on the ‘right’ side of 2008’s bright red line. Between his presidencies, Trump was under severe legal assault, as prosecutors and litigants dragged him to court in desperate attempts to prevent him from running in last year’s election. What is significant is that during this interpraesidentiam, none of the officials hell-bent on abusing their office to deny Trump a second term ever made use of his associations with Epstein. These associations did not form any part of the 2024 Presidential campaign by either Biden or Harris. Of course this might have been because of the risk of collateral damage on the Democrats, not least the Clintons, but, given that the Clinton political machine was in decline after 2016, this seems unlikely. And the same media are still not pursuing the Clintons with the same energy reserved for Trump.
But the absence of American elites and the prevalence of their British counterparts whose reputations have been severely injured is worthy of note. Was it because these high-status individuals shrewdly positioned themselves on the correct side of the bright red line and cut all associations with Epstein at the moment of his conviction in a manner similar to how Oscar Wilde was discarded from Victorian society on his own conviction for sexual offences? No, this does not seem to be the case.
My tinfoil hat suggests that it’s because these people can all afford expensive lawyers who are working very hard to protect their reputations in the USA. It was not only Brits, or former Brits, who were so dumb as to continue social links with a convicted child sex offender. Epstein’s conviction was obviously a test of friendship with some people. Those people, including the now-former British Ambassador to the USA, valued the friendship with Epstein, and the transactional benefits associated with that friendship, to a greater degree than the stigma and disgust associated with child rape.
But this does suggest that there is a massive cover-up under way, and this cover-up only protects American nationals to the detriment of non-Americans, or perhaps just Brits. This says rather too much about how Americans conduct themselves. Or perhaps that is just the tinfoil hat talking. You decide.
Paul T Horgan worked in the IT Sector. He lives in Berkshire.