July 18, AD2025: Epstein Listgate, Impunity, and the American Need to Touch the Untouchable

We use to tar and feather people in this country

An imagining of our perilous state

Dear Readers,

The news this week was dominated by a man who has been dead for six years. Jeffrey Edward Epstein was born in New York in 1953, and died on August 10, 2019 in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a federal jail, also in New York. The manner of his death and the reason he was imprisoned are the subjects much controversy and conspiracy theorizing. The truth is that his case is weird, and the strangeness provokes speculation. But it gets worse because for half-a-decade the current political party in power, and their leader the American president have said they would reveal the truth. And now after promising to release the supposed list of clients, who it is alleged abused women and minors Epstein trafficked to the powerful, rich and connected, this month, the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have stated there is no credible evidence such a list exists. In Congress, Republicans blocked Democrat efforts to have Congress formally call for the list to be released.

Much of the Republican Party base is angry. It looks like the Republicans in Washington are covering for very bad people; bad connected people.

It likely there is no “list” that was kept by Epstein himself, however, rather it is possible one has been put together by federal investigators. The conspiracy theory is that this investigatory list has withheld from both public scrutiny and criminal investigations of the powerful individuals involved.

The breadcrumbs internet sleuths have followed to reach these conclusions are Epstein’s flight logs which name high-profile individuals like former President William Jefferson Clinton, current Present Donald John Trump, and Prince Andrew of Great Britain. To be clear, appearing in them does not prove criminal activity, however in the case of Prince Andrew, he reached a confidential out-of-court settlement with Virginia Giuffre, who had accused him of sexual assault when she was a minor trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein. The settlement was widely reported to be around £12 million, which included a donation to Giuffre’s charity supporting victims of abuse. Although the agreement did not include an admission of guilt, Prince Andrew expressed regret over his association with Epstein and acknowledged Giuffre’s suffering. The case was formally dismissed in March 2022, avoiding a civil trial in US court.

After all that, just last week, the FBI and DOJ concluded their investigations, claiming to find no credible evidence to pursue criminal charges against Prince Andrew or others based on Epstein’s alleged network. To the Make America Great Again movement this looks suspicious.

This is more than an ordinary conspiracy theory. 70% of Americans believe the truth about Epstein is being hidden. That is a landslide of public opinion. Americans are angry and believe that there is a two-tier justice system. One for the rich and famous and another for everyone else. When 70% of people believe in a conspiracy it becomes a scandal, Listgate.

Our Dangerous Antihero Moment

Remember pizzagate? Pizzagate was a conspiracy theory that falsely claimed high-ranking members of the Democratic Party were running a child sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington, D.C. pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong. It originated in 2016 after WikiLeaks released emails from John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman. Online users misinterpreted phrases in the emails as coded messages. The theory spread on social media and fringe forums. In December 2016, a man armed with a rifle entered Comet Ping Pong to investigate the claims and fired at least one shot; no one was injured.(update July 19: The man was killed by police in an unrelated North Carolina traffic stop in January 2025, after he pulled a handgun on the police.) The conspiracy theory has been thoroughly debunked by law enforcement and independent investigations. Pizzagate was fiction. But Listgate is anchored in facts: real names, real victims, real settlements, real non-prosecutions. And it reinforces that core narrative of pizzagate, that the elite are protecting a cabal of child abusers. Pizzagate was fringe, listgate is mainstream.

Two things standout, one the story of pizzagate is crazy and terrifying. The other is an American was willing to go lone ranger to try to save children. To some this is frightening, to others it is admirable. The decline of trust can make those who violate norms, against the untouchable elite, seem like misguided avatars of public anger. When the elite appear lawless, it can create sympathy for those who return the lawlessness. Hence the controversy over the relatively large minority of young Americans who sympathize with Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing Brian Thompson the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. When public belief in justice collapses, figures like Luigi Mangione emerge as folk heroes not because they are righteous—but because the people no longer believe the law serves them, and that places the entire system in peril.

Throughout history, some criminals have become celebrated as folk heroes. This usually happens when groups of people feel ignored, mistreated, or oppressed by those in power. To them, the criminal represents a fight against unfair systems and thus is not a villain; rather, the system is the real criminal in the minds of some people. But when a criminal is seen as a hero by the majority of society—not just a small group of malcontents—it signals a major problem. It means that the rules and leaders of the system no longer reflect the values or hopes of the people. When this happens, the system’s authority becomes fragile, and the stability of society is at danger of collapse.

This was the case during the American Revolutionary Era from 1764-1783. The war against Parliament and British oppression started in 1775, but the Revolution began a decade earlier. The Revolution was in the minds of the American people. It was wild and often violent.

Americans have sanitized the reality of tarring and feathering. We laugh and celebrate tarring and feathering British tax and customs officials, but the act could only be the darkest of humor. It was a horrifying act, that could leave lasting damage to the victims’ physical and mental health.

Often, the victim was stripped nude in an act of public humiliation before tar was poured over them, often hot tar, and then they were covered in feathers. In the century before antibiotics the removal of feathers, ripping them from the skin, frequently led to infections. On occasions, they were then tied to a tree or post and beaten and whipped; on one occasion in Virginia, a person who supported the British during protests over taxes got the tar and feathers, and then was thrown into a harbor and left to drown, only to be saved at the last minute. The perpetrators of these acts were local chapters of the Sons of Liberty. We call them heroes and patriots and many will dress like them and celebrate their deeds next year for the 250th anniversary of American Independence. The British should never have let it get so out of hand.

It is a warning of how intentional cruelty and political violence can be justified and romanticized after the fact. The reality is the Sons of Liberty did little to actually further the Patriot cause; the real work was done on the battlefield and by the hard-working politicians in the Continental Congress. If anything, the Sons of Liberty risked ruining the whole cause. And yet, sensational violence can capture the imagination, becoming a spectacle, but normally, Americans are aware enough of the risks to resist the temptation. Except when they feel the system is unjust, and then you get the Sons of Liberty problem.

Think of the Jesse James Gang: while some folks in media and literature have become romanticized outlaws, most Americans at the time saw them as criminals to be put down, and the lawman was the hero. The same with Billy the Kid, an exciting figure, yes, but again, the gunslinger sheriff was the ideal hero to end the menace. America has largely been a white hat country. We might be fascinated by stylish gangsters like Al Capone, but most of us want to see them brought down like a Greek tragedy. But you are in danger of becoming a different country when a sixth of Americans cheer a man who shot another man in the back. This is the danger zone, and America’s leaders ignore it at their peril, and encouraging lawlessness and stoking conspiracism is foolhardy.

We are not yet a country that sees the justice system as completely corrupt. But we are flirting with becoming one. The pardons of January 6 rioters, and clemency for the “Kids for Cash” judge who sold juveniles to detention centers—these are signals that the system is either too corrupt or too comfortable to defend its moral ground.

A rebel folk hero is someone who symbolizes the ideals, struggles, and hopes of ordinary people. They are often admired because they break the rules in ways that seem fairer or more just than the system they are fighting. This happens especially when the law itself feels unfair or corrupt. We celebrate figures like Robin Hood. In history, we wrestle with ones like John Brown. His raid on Harper’s Ferry was reckless and failed, but his moral clarity inspired abolitionists and terrified slaveholders. The law called him a madman. The people called him something else. Think of Robin Hood’s legend: he broke the law by stealing from the rich to help the poor, but in the myth, he is a hero standing up for justice during a time of great inequality. The man some are calling “The Adjuster,” and others name him “Robin Hoodie,” is a sign of growing social breakdown.

There is already a popular push for a Luigi Mangione film, with actor Dave Franco sharing how he has received a constant stream of texts asking him about playing the accused. No studio has the idea to do it yet, but the fact that a major actor’s friends were gaga over the idea should concern everyone. Even before social media influencers, fame bred copycats. And fame that comes with a tinge of the heroic is extra appealing. Investigators in Mangione’s case the found the words “delay,” “deny,” and “depose” etched into the bullet casings at the murder scene. The phrase was quickly linked to Delay, Deny, Defend, a book by Jay M. Feinman that critiques and explains how insurers delay claims, deny coverage, and defend their actions in court. The shooting popularized the phrase on social media.

The idea of Delay, Deny, Defend is how many in MAGA now see the DOJ; it captures what many belief is the institutional behavior that has fueled public distrust in the Epstein case and others like it. The current leaders of the Department of Justice and FBI stoked the suspicions of their audience, now after the organizations they head took years to investigate, they have produced no meaningful accountability, denied the existence of the so-called client list, and now defend their inaction as due process. If they are not believed it is because they have created the conditions for the public to not believe the official narrative. No good comes from that.

For a political economy to work, people have to believe in its fairness and logic. This belief is called legitimacy. Without legitimacy, even strict laws or powerful rulers can’t maintain control for long.

We need resolution because we need peace, we do not need vigilantes, and we do not need to become a lower trust society. Let’s hope for cooler heads and transparency to prevail. Whatever the truth is let us have it out in the open, and hope that whoever the government has telling the story is sincere and convincing. Americans are tired of elite impunity.

(a late post this Friday, L’esprit de l’escalier, updated July 19, 2025)