The Epstein Fiasco Has Been A Complete Nightmare For Civil Liberties

This is the second installment of my collaborative series with Matt Taibbi; it has been cross-posted at Racket News.

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I’m often asked why I’ve bothered to devote so much time and energy to this interminable Jeffrey Epstein saga, and it’s forced me to come up with a bit of a stock answer. One major reason, I tell my kindly inquisitors, is that the sprawling multi-decade fiasco has been disastrous for civil liberties. Which gets comprehensively ignored, despite the hyper-saturation levels of media coverage. No one in their right mind wants to be accused of “defending Epstein,” even if what they’re manifestly doing is not “defending Epstein,” but pointing out that civil liberties have been worryingly abridged. The vindictive moralistic frenzy that attaches to this issue means that by simply calling attention to objectionable government conduct, you can expect to be instantly spun as somehow condoning the personal proclivities of Jeffrey Epstein. And who wants to deal with that headache? Therefore: out of sight, out of mind. Which is a recurring pattern for how civil liberties invariably end up getting eroded. It’s always a crowd-pleaser to direct punitive state action at the most reviled figures in society — the most notorious of which in previous eras have included “terrorists,” “domestic extremists,” “drug dealers,” and the like. The more untameable the public animus against a particular category of wrongdoer, the more readily civil liberties can be chucked aside. So when it comes to “pedophiles” and “child sex-traffickers” — forget it. All bets are off. Perpetrators of quadruple homicide are less culturally anathema these days. Here’s a neat trick for prosecutors and politicians: if you want to make the Constitution vanish, just say you’re punishing “pedos.”

However unpleasant we might find actual pedophilic criminality — though the definition of such seems to expand exponentially by the day — unchecked degradation of civil liberties affects the entire body politic, whether or not you give a hoot about Epstein. Some readers might be wondering what specific infringements I’m talking about, and their wonder isn’t unreasonable, as so little airtime has ever been given to these affronts. So let’s get specific. After he died in federal custody, the government predictably moved to dismiss the charges pending against Epstein, because he was no longer alive. Thus rendering any criminal proceedings against him moot. Or so one might have thought. Turns out, the presiding judge in the Southern District of New York, Richard M. Berman, had another idea. Berman announced he was going to do something wildly aberrational — or as the New York Law Journal politely described it at the time, “unique, and perhaps unprecedented.” That is, Berman proclaimed he would convene a hitherto unheard-of hearing, in which any self-identified “victim” was invited to show up and be granted an unfettered platform to say whatever the heck they wanted about Epstein. Who at this point had never been convicted of any federal crimes. And was also deceased. Thus eliminating his ability to refute unflattering claims made against him. Berman said the technical purpose of the hearing was to consider arguments around nolle prosequi — the nullification of Epstein’s indictment upon his death — even though there was no serious legal question that charges against a decedent must be dismissed. Using this bogus pretext, Berman allowed his courtroom to transform into a complete free-for-all, with a parade of self-declared “victims” and lawyers filing in for what could only be described as a judicially-authorized “struggle session.”

The hearing, on August 27, 2019, also predictably became a giant media frenzy. Journalists swarmed the courthouse and its surrounding environs, though virtually none evinced the slightest apprehension about the civil liberties implications of the spectacle they were about to behold. “Victim” after “victim” — some named, some permitted to stay comfortably anonymous — gave tearful monologues recounting their purported victimization by Epstein, without the faintest notion that their claims would be subjected to even basic corroborative vetting, much less cross-examined. Instead, they could just rattle off whatever came to mind, with the implied imprimatur of the court. Epstein’s erstwhile defense counsel was relegated to sitting quietly by, with their client having just been found dead under circumstances that are still murky.

One anonymous “victim” presented at this hearing claimed that as a 15-year-old girl living in Texas, she was approached at the mall one day by an unidentified woman who spotted her carrying a violin case. The woman purportedly told her about a “very rich man who had a home close by,” and that he would like to hear her play the violin. “After some hesitation,” the anonymous “Jane Doe” recounted, she agreed to visit the man. This, she said, turned out to be the most catastrophic decision of her life, marking the death of her childhood and loss of her innocence. Eventually, she claimed, she was tricked into “forced copulation” with the man, who she now understands to have been Jeffrey Epstein.

There was just one slight problem: Epstein is never known to have had a “home” in Texas. The closest conceivable property would’ve been his ranch in New Mexico, which was located about 200 miles from the Texas border — certainly not “close by” to any shopping mall in Texas. Nothing about this person’s anonymous story made a lick of sense, but it was all lapped up totally uncritically, as Judge Berman decided anyone who believed themselves a “victim” could saunter into the courthouse that day and tell any Epstein-related tale they cared to conjure. From the bench, Berman affirmed that the individuals present were in fact bonafide “victims,” and repeatedly referred to them as such, without requiring even minimal verification of the facts underlying their purported victimhood. Gone was any idea that assigning the label of “victim” should be accompanied by meddlesome, outmoded qualifiers such as “alleged victim,” or “purported victim.” Instead, “victimhood” was now an unchallengeable metaphysical status that could be conferred on anyone who desired it. Abandoning the customary pretense of judicial neutrality, Berman even personally commended the “victims” for their “courage to come forward” — regardless of whether or not what they were “coming forward” to say was true. That was totally immaterial.

As to the mystery Texas victim, her statement was read aloud in court by the famed feminist lawyer Gloria Allred, who clearly relished the chance to get in on some hot Epstein action. But a few weeks after the hearing, the mystery compounded. Allred submitted a notice to Judge Berman on September 26, 2019 declaring that she no longer represented the “Jane Doe” whose statement she had dramatically read. No further explanation was given. Nor, apparently, was any explanation ever sought. I recently asked Allred for an update on this mysterious turn of events. What steps, if any, were taken to corroborate the accuser’s claims? Has any evidence emerged in the past six years that would substantiate the notion that Epstein procured teenage girls from shopping malls in Texas? What were the grounds for Allred’s sudden withdrawal of representation from this individual? Her answer: “No comment.”

This unexplained snafu did not stop the government from relying on Allred to furnish additional “victim” evidence as the investigatory process wore on. In the “Epstein Files” released by the Department of Justice earlier this month, Allred can be seen emailing her contact at the US Attorney’s office, on October 18, 2019, with the subject line: “Urgent […] I have a new client who was a victim of Epstein. She is willing to fly to New York for the victim meeting on Oct. 23. May I call you at 5:45 P.M. to discuss ?” An assistant US Attorney, apparently on a first-name basis with “Gloria,” replies: “We will make ourselves available to meet with your new client on 10/23.”

Given the expansive redactions that suffuse these latest “Epstein Files,” it’s difficult to discern whatever came of this “new client,” and if she was deemed of any “urgent” value by the Southern District of New York, which by then was in fervent pursuit of Ghislaine Maxwell, and perhaps other potential “co-conspirators” of Epstein. Either way, interfacing with the FBI and US Attorney’s office could be profitably cited in any civil litigation Allred might subsequently bring. Another chain of emails between August and October of 2020 shows Allred once again propositioning her federal contacts about “new potential victims of Epstein and some of Maxwell who are willing to speak to you and the FBI.” No clients of Allred are known to have testified in the 2021 trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, or to have played any material role in that prosecution. However, an associate at Allred’s law firm can be seen repeatedly inquiring if the Feds could please send her “documents” and “photographs” related to Allred’s clients, which would certainly have been helpful for any forthcoming lawsuits.

One client of Allred’s was eventually revealed to be Alicia Arden, who claims that in 1997, she met Epstein in a hotel room in Santa Monica, CA, for what was ostensibly supposed to be some sort of private lingerie exhibition. Arden, then age 27, was an aspiring Victoria’s Secret model. Epstein was then a money manager and confidant to billionaire Leslie Wexner, the owner of Victoria’s Secret, and he’d often use this fortuitous position to attend various soirees filled with attractive young ladies, to whom he could present himself as friendly conduit to the elite modeling industry. Over the course of their hotel room liaison, Arden claims Epstein “groped her buttocks,” and she reported the offense to local police, who determined the complaint to merit no further action. The officer documenting Arden’s complaint noted that she acknowledged “having reservations” about the meeting before her arrival, because “generally, meetings are not conducted in hotel rooms.” Details of this decades-old encounter were tearfully recounted by Arden, with Allred by her side, as recently as August 6, 2025, and again on November 17, 2025, at press conferences convened by Allred in Los Angeles. None of the attending journalists asked what the allegation, even if true, would have to do with the “child sex-trafficking” theories that tend to dominate the public’s conception of the Epstein matter, seeing as Arden was 27 years old at the time. Allred told me in a September 3, 2025 interview that at some point Arden did speak to federal law enforcement about Epstein, but evidently, nothing ever came of it. When I inquired if Arden had sought or received any of the profligate settlement monies that became available after Epstein’s death — including for alleged adult “victims” — Allred would not say, citing client privacy concerns.

Other emails from the recent DOJ batch show unnamed officials forwarding around news of a “stunt” Allred had orchestrated, in which she placed a banner ad on the side of a school bus circling Buckingham Palace, exhorting random British pedestrians to send the FBI tips about Prince Andrew. Curiously, another email exchange from November 2024 features FBI agents discussing how Allred “made it difficult speaking with individuals she represented,” as certain clients of hers had “refused” to provide the FBI with their contact information.

Returning to the fateful August 27, 2019 hearing held by Judge Berman, ahead of this confab, Bradley Edwards — one of the “victim” lawyers who’s made an absolute fortune on his years-long entanglement with Epstein — sensed a priceless opportunity. In his widely unread 2020 memoir, Relentless Pursuit, he recalls that when Judge Berman announced the hearing, Edwards had a bold idea, so he got on the phone with a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Maurene Comey. Yes, that Maurene Comey.

Edwards says he “pleaded” with Comey: “Can you ask the government to pay for all who want to come?”

“The government has never done that before,” Comey reportedly told him. “But we will ask.”

Within an hour, Edwards got a phone call back, with amazing news: “Please tell your clients that the government has agreed to pay for the travel and hotels of all Epstein victims who wish to attend.”

So not only was Judge Berman holding this elaborate, essentially extra-judicial hearing, where self-described “victims” who had never been adjudicated as such could pile into court and blast off whatever damning commentary they wanted about a dead defendant — taxpayers were also going to subsidize the brouhaha. More details on the mechanics have begun to trickle out in the long-awaited “Epstein Files” production earlier this month. Emails show the superstar Epstein “victim” Virginia Roberts Giuffre — a proven serial fabulist who had to recant a succession of her most sensational claims — scrambling to arrange last-minute travel from Australia to New York, so she could take part in the hotly-anticipated August 27 hearing. Prosecutors were eager to assist in whatever way they could. Taking up the offer, Virginia writes that since it had been decided that US taxpayers would underwrite her hotel, ground transportation, and airfare, “I would need to fly business.” This was “needed,” she claimed, due to “an ongoing medical condition.” Perhaps what she was referencing was the universal “condition” of preferring spacious and comfortable First Class seating on a long-haul flight. The cost for a one-way ticket was $10,673.40 — and the government seemingly picked up the tab.

Also among those whom Judge Berman thanked that day for having “the courage to come forward” was Sarah Ransome. Taxpayers likewise were made to shell out $1,492.02 for Ransome’s flight from Barcelona to New York. She declared that she was a “victim of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s international sex trafficking ring,” and further announced that she was not merely a “victim” but a “survivor” — catalyzing a strange lexical shift, where it’s now increasingly mandatory to use the term “survivor,” seen as a more empowering designation than “victim.” It also seems to carry a certain sense of enhanced moral profundity, not unlike “Holocaust Survivor” — and certainly the Epstein affair has come to be regarded as of comparable historical magnitude. Ransome duly denounced Epstein as a “depraved and cowardly human” and added, “we all know he did not act alone.”

In the more than six years since that hearing, no criminal proceeding has ever found Ransome to have been the victim of any “international sex trafficking ring.” However, a variety of other interesting findings have been made. Such as that Ransome first entered Epstein’s orbit as a 22-year-old fashionista who earned an income by having “dinner” with “gentlemen,” for which she would be paid $1,500, and would sometimes have sex with these gentlemen if she found them attractive. She also claimed to possess sex tapes of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Richard Branson, and Prince Andrew. “I have backed up the footage on several USB sticks and have securely sent them to various different locations throughout Europe,” Ransome said. She later admitted this was all completely fabricated — there were never any sex tapes. Her declared mission at the time was to ensure that neither “that evil bitch Hillary” nor “Paedophile Trump” would win the 2016 presidential election. Exactly who Ransome thought would be the alternative victor is unclear: perhaps she backed the Libertarian Party. Ransome also claimed that the CIA hacked her emails. “I have reached out to the Russians for help and they are coming to my aid,” she wrote to New York Post journalist Maureen Callahan, adding that she had already “corresponded with the Moscow police” on the matter, and had resolved to “aid them in stopping Hillary or Trump getting through.” (Callahan reported none of these emails contemporaneously; all were eventually unearthed through lawsuit discovery.)

So in other words, Ransome was a certified nutcase. This didn’t stop her from getting a HarperCollins book deal, for a memoir touchingly entitled Silenced No More — nor was her nuttiness any impediment to being named as a plaintiff in some of the most consequential litigation against the Epstein estate, which ultimately led to the creation of the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program, from which Ransome undoubtedly received a generous (tax-free!) payout — likely in the millions. Perhaps her good fortune in this regard stemmed from the perceived credibility she was afforded by her participation in Judge Berman’s wild August 2019 hearing. But as the years went by, things continued to unravel for Ransome, psychologically and otherwise. She turned on one of her high-powered lawyers, David Boies, declaring he had “betrayed” her for reasons she attempted to explain, but were increasingly indecipherable. She wrote in a 2023 affidavit: “I am infertile and have no children. I am damaged and broken because I was raped hundreds of times by Epstein while his enablers stood by and watched. My mother witnessed me die three times.” She started rebuking Boies not just as a craven betrayer, but as “Deablous,” a demon-like being. She sent rambling emails addressed to Joe Biden, Pope Francis, Vladimir Putin, Recep Erdogan, Mohammed bin Salman, among others, demanding to be granted a central diplomatic role in mediating the Ukraine war and Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She even did the unthinkable for any self-respecting “Epstein Survivor,” and condemned Virginia Roberts Giuffre:

And so, a core function of Judge Berman’s state-sanctioned struggle session was to give a veneer of credibility to the delusions of straight-up crazy people. Viral videos still routinely circulate of Ransome speaking to the media that day in August 2019, alleging that factory-style mass rape went on at Epstein’s property in the US Virgin Islands, or as she called it, a veritable “conveyor belt of abuse.” Of course, nothing was ever remotely proven to this effect. Another function of Judge Berman’s hearing was to assist federal prosecutors in what had become their supreme prerogative: making sure someone, somewhere, got convicted of something in lieu of Epstein, who had embarrassingly perished on the government’s watch. Bradley Edwards wrote that the “victims” he’d helped assemble were ushered directly from the courthouse into the quarters of US Attorney Geoffrey Berman (no relation to Judge Berman). Among the most notable of these proved to be Anouska De Georgiou, who said in July 2025 that she fondly remembers the hearing as “probably the single most emotional moment of my entire life,” as it felt like she had finally been inducted into a collective of “sisters in trauma.” Serendipitously, De Georgiou was interviewed by the FBI “directly after” the hearing. By 2021, she was a marquee government witness in the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell — permitted by Judge Alison Nathan to testify under a fake name, “Kate,” despite having already gone public under her real name, both at the August 2019 hearing and a subsequent NBC interview with Savannah Guthrie. New records produced by the DOJ finally elucidate a thorny issue that came up at trial, which is that in 2008, when she was 31 years old, De Georgiou was writing flirtatious emails to Jeffrey Epstein (while he was incarcerated in Florida!) offering to send him racy photos, and even to come visit. She continued to initiate similar communications in 2010 and 2011, always keen to pay Jeffrey a wholesome social visit. However, by 2019, she realized she was in fact a “survivor,” and reaped $3.25 million (tax-free!) from the Epstein estate, not to mention whatever remuneration she also surely received from other settlement funds. By 2021, her survivorship had been upgraded to “child sex-trafficking” survivor, as she was called forth by the government to send Maxwell to prison. By 2025, she was delivering soaring oratorical performances at rallies and press conferences in front of the US Capitol, flanked by politicians enthralled with her bravery. She has also launched her own podcast.

After Maxwell was convicted, thanks in part to the pseudonymous testimony of De Georgiou, “survivors” gathered once more at the federal courthouse in Manhattan, this time to promulgate “Victim Impact Statements.” That’s the practice whereby judges can hold hearings after a defendant has been found guilty, and allow a bunch of people to say stuff that’s supposed to influence the judge’s sentencing decision. These statements are not scrutinized for factual accuracy, or subject to cross-examination, and can include evidence (or purported evidence) that was never admitted at trial. Among those permitted to make “Victim Impact Statements” against Ghislaine Maxwell at a June 28, 2022 hearing were Anouska De Georgiou, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Sarah Ransome, and Juliette Bryant, the latter of whom claims she was abducted by UFOs, and once witnessed Jeffrey Epstein morph into a reptilian humanoid creature. Bryant has also attempted to perform an astrology reading on me personally over DMs. The reading was harmless enough — even mildly amusing — but the idea that this woman could ever play a legally decisive role in anything is self-evidently absurd.

The very concept of “Victim Impact Statements” is already dubious enough. They used to be quite controversial. In Payne v. Tennessee (1991) Justice John Paul Stevens lamented that “Victim Impact Statements” enable prosecutors to introduce irrelevant and prejudicial evidence against defendants, and further, that the practice “encourages reliance on emotion” rather than what sentencing decisions should be properly based on, which is “reason.” Ransome submitted a suite of disturbing photos in her “Victim Impact Statement,” purporting to illustrate at least two of her apparent suicide attempts. No causal link between these apparent suicide attempts and the conduct of Ghislaine Maxwell was ever meaningfully established. De Georgiou wrote in her statement that “the many acts that were perpetrated on me by Epstein, including rape, strangulation and sexual assault, were never consensual, and would have never occurred, had it not been for the cunning and premeditated role Ghislaine Maxwell played.” Curiously, these allegations of violent rape cunningly facilitated by Maxwell were wholly absent from the actual trial in which De Georgiou had testified, with its slightly stricter standards around the admissibility of evidence. Indeed, the judge in that trial was compelled to instruct jurors that De Georgiou had undergone no “illegal sexual activity.” But during this more free-wheeling “Victim Impact” phase, the gloves were off, as were any evidentiary safeguards. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison, where she remains today.

At least Maxwell had been convicted of something when she was harangued with these “Victim Impact Statements” of questionable veracity. Not so for the August 2019 hearing held by Judge Berman, which amounted to a de facto “Victim Impact” session to cathartically malign a defendant, Epstein, who was never convicted, or even stood trial, and was also dead.

As a subsequent article in the Fordham Law Review opined: “When, as in Epstein’s case, the defendant dies before a trial has even begun, the court must treat the accused as innocent for all legal or judicial purposes, regardless of popular sentiment or assumptions to the contrary.” Judge Berman delivered a resounding blow to this most basic tenet of due process, thus undermining the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, not just for deceased alleged “pedophiles” such as Epstein, but for everyone who’d like to retain the pre-Pedo Panic principles of the Constitution.

Whenever I try to highlight any of this stuff, there’s always an onslaught of trolls demanding that the FBI seize my hard-drives — with the idea being that I must be hiding my own sexual depravities. That could be my only conceivable motive for “defending Epstein,” or more accurately, highlighting the ways in which Epstein mania has undermined core precepts of civil liberty. You can try to refute these sleazy imputations all you want, but anyone who’d sling them in the first place is never going to be persuaded. (For the record, I can confirm there’s nothing of much interest on my hard-drive, perhaps other than the mountains of PDF files I’ve had to accumulate researching this case. If you’d like to make an appointment to view the hard-drive yourself sometime, let me know.) At this point, for me, the sicko name-calling barely even registers anymore. But the torrential downpour of slime gives some insight into why the media has almost uniformly declined to cover this story with any semblance of critical detachment or discernment. Most people, including journalists, have concluded that life is too short to be barraged day after day with ridiculous “pedo” smears. Even to refute such smears would be to bring more attention to them, and no one wants to be associated with “pedo”-related insinuations at all, regardless of context. Though it should be said: a handful of journalists have contacted me privately to say they now agree with, or at least tentatively appreciate, what I’ve been trying to get across about Epstein. Even if going public about it themselves is not worth the hassle. The problem with this mentality, however, is that while you might spare yourself short-term hardship, the long-term debasement of civil liberties will continue unabated. And those civil liberties could come in handy someday, if they’re still around.

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