The crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, and the conspiracy theories they have spawned could really benefit from a taxonomy for laypeople. So here goes:

Jeffrey Epstein was a rich investment manager who used his fortune to traffic and rape underage girls. But when federal prosecutors first got hold of his case way back in the George W. Bush administration, they were mysteriously lenient about it.

A decade later, during Donald Trump’s first term, Epstein was again indicted on sex-trafficking charges, and died in his prison cell, reportedly by suicide.

That much is just true. But many questions remained suspiciously unanswered: Who, if anyone, among Epstein’s friends and business clients also raped underage girls? Why haven’t they been brought to justice? Who’s protecting them, and for what reason?

Conspiracy theorists filled the void. On the right, this unfurled into a wild, self-serving fantasy: Democratic Party and liberal elites were members of an underground pedophilia ring, and their allies in the deep state connived to protect them.

There’s was also a less partisan version: Perhaps Epstein did run something like a child-sex “service”, implicating scumbags across the political spectrum—enough of them that the federal government decided settling the case was necessary to protect the establishment.

Others suspect the feds went easy on Epstein because (among his other activities) he was supposedly a foreign intelligence asset or a member of a foreign intelligence service. Among antisemites and antisemite-adjacent conspiracy theorists, Epstein was a spy sent here to help Israel compromise and control American politicians.

But there are other, less paranoid, theories: One is the null hypothesis: Epstein didn’t do any pimping, and all the weird facts surrounding his case can be explained legitimately. He was well known among the elite due to his wealth and philanthropy. But his crimes were for him. Another is that the question’s genuinely murky, because Epstein knew better than to take notes on a criminal conspiracy. Yet a third is that Epstein didn’t have “clients,” but he was happy to invite a small number of transgressive rich people who got wind of his habits into his sanctum.

Today the question is: was Donald Trump one of them?

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THE SUMMONS OF ALL FEARS

That’s been an open question for years, but for the past few days Trump has been acting as if the answer is surely yes.

“Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration,” he wrote manically this weekend. “They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called ‘friends’ are playing right into their hands.”

Translated from Trumpese, it’s essentially indistinguishable from a confession: There must be material in the Epstein case file (stuff that hasn’t already become public) that looks really bad for Trump. Does that mean he’s a pedophile? That he committed statutory rape? We can’t know at this juncture and it’s possible we never will. But what we can say is enough to pry a scandal wide open—not just as to Donald Trump’s conduct, but as to the nature of the professional right and its embrace of bad faith as a political method. Its calculated decision to rip society apart with lies and misdirection...