There Is No Client List

The real scandal is what’s legal.

I have actually not enjoyed much schadenfreude at the MAGAt feud over the records of the Jeffrey Epstein case. For one thing, fascist feuds never really last. They hate us liberals much more than they hate anything else so they will continue to follow their Leader no matter what he does. What really keeps me from reveling in their fight is that they’re creating an extremely destructive fantasy that will continue to harm the nation long after these idiots have vanished. The fantasy is that bad people all plan out their evil and tell us in the audience about it. Very few villains provide us with the satisfying spectacle of Shakespeare’s Richard III in his first soliloquy:

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to see my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determinèd to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the King
In deadly hate, the one against the other;
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,

Life would be much easier if every bad person openly ‘determined to prove a villain’ and set out their intentions in documentation. District Attorney’s offices could slash their budgets since trials would all be 20 minutes long and consist only of handing the judge a copy of the defendants’ speeches.

I have to define my terms clearly here at the beginning. The Quniverse is the group of people who think that there are a bunch of rich people who purchase children for sex and other horrible things and that there are businesses who supply this market. The “Epstein Client List” is, in this world, a document listing all the people who purchased young people from Epstein specifically for sex. The problem for the Quniverse is that the people who had the most to lose from the existence of such a piece of paper is Jeffrey Epstein himself.

This part is going to be boring but it’s necessary in order to explain why this document does not exist. Epstein was indicted under Title 18 United States Code Section 1591, “Sex Trafficking of Children or by Force, Fraud, or Coercion.” This is the text of the law:

§1591. Sex trafficking of children or by force, fraud ¹ or coercion

(a) Whoever knowingly-

(1) in or affecting interstate commerce, recruits, entices, harbors, transports, provides, or obtains by any means a person; or

(2) benefits, financially or by receiving anything of value, from participation in a venture which has engaged in an act described in violation of paragraph (1),

knowing that force, fraud, or coercion described in subsection (c)(2) will be used to cause the person to engage in a commercial sex act, or that the person has not attained the age of 18 years and will be caused to engage in a commercial sex act, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b).

(b) The punishment for an offense under subsection (a) is-

(1) if the offense was effected by force, fraud, or coercion or if the person transported had not attained the age of 14 years at the time of such offense, by a fine under this title or imprisonment for any term of years or for life, or both; or

(2) if the offense was not so effected, and the person transported had attained the age of 14 years but had not attained the age of 18 years at the time of such offense, by a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than 20 years, or both.

(c) In this section:

(1) The term "commercial sex act" means any sex act, on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person.

(2) The term "coercion" means-

(A) threats of serious harm to or physical restraint against any person;

(B) any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that failure to perform an act would result in serious harm to or physical restraint against any person; or

(C) the abuse or threatened abuse of law or the legal process.

(3) The term "venture" means any group of two or more individuals associated in fact, whether or not a legal entity.

In order to win a case under this section, the prosecutor will have to provide concrete evidence that the defendant ‘knowingly’ schemed to get a person to perform a ‘commercial sex act’ in ‘interstate commerce.’ That last part is easy, since it only requires proving that some part of the transaction occurred in ‘interstate commerce’ which be anything from using the mail or a cell phone up to actually crossing state lines for the sex. The rest is a lot more complicated.

The elements of the violation in the referenced statute are:

1. “Knowingly”

2. “recruits, entices, harbors, transports, provides, or obtains by any means”

3. “A person”

4. Or, if the perp didn’t do the actual recruiting “benefits, financially or by receiving anything of value, from participation in a venture which has engaged in” commercial sex trafficking

5. knowing that force, fraud, or coercion described in subsection (c)(2) will be used to cause the person to engage in a commercial sex act, or that the person has not attained the age of 18 years and will be caused to engage in a commercial sex act” may be punished by a fine or prison sentence.

6. ‘Commercial sex act’ means any sex act for which money or ‘a thing of value’ is exchanged.

Let’s start with “knowing.” In order to be convicted of almost any crime, the person has to know what they were doing. In this case, the perp has to know that either the person they’re having sex with was coerced or enticed, or, more relevant, was under 18. If Epstein created a spreadsheet entitled ‘Client List’ with the names of the people who paid him for sex with kids, that document would by itself prove everything contained in the statute. It would very clearly show that Epstein knew the victims were underage and that he was accepting payments from rich dudes to have sex with kids. It would embarrass the clients — maybe, we’ll get to that — but it would mostly point the gun right back at his own face. Epstein was a creep, but he wasn’t stupid, and he had access to some of the fanciest lawyers on Earth, who are barred by ethical rules from discussing any advice they gave him. Creating a document containing a detailed list of facts constituting evidence of violations of that law would be really dumb on his part. I think it’s reasonable to assume he knew that.

It’s worth spending some time on one specific problem with the ‘client list’ assertions. Epstein’s actual career was ‘financier.’ He supposedly managed investment accounts for very, very rich people. That’s why he owned a private jet and a private island. He had perfectly legit reasons to be receiving enormous amounts of cash from those rich dudes. Money is fungible, and unless someone was stupid enough to write a paper check with ‘purchase of 13-year-old prostitute’ in the ‘For’ line, there is no way to prove that anyone gave him that money for any reason other than to invest. Thus, the key element of ‘commercial sex act’ — an exchange of value — can’t be proven in the absence of that mythical document described in the preceding paragraph.

Not only are the ‘client’ protected by the absence of this list, Epstein himself is, because it becomes extremely difficult to show that he ‘benefitted’ from any ‘commercial sex act.’ The prosecutors then have to prove that he ‘enticed’ or ‘coerced’ the young women into having sex with him, which means they have to show that Epstein paid the young women directly. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that entirely too many people will then see the young women not as victims, but as whores. Having sex with a not-extremely-disgusting rich dude in exchange for a ride on a private jet or invitations to a private island can be made to seem rational by a decent defense lawyer. The ‘client list’ makes Epstein a pimp; without it, he’s just a normal guy! ¹

That is the real scandal here. The Quniverse wants evidence that rich Democrats bought teenagers for horror-movie rituals. They want mustache-twirling movie villains, when in fact what we have is something simultaneously worse but ordinary. Epstein preyed on the fantasies of troubled young women who had little else in the world but their looks and youth. His most famous accuser suffered from serious mental health issues her whole life. Add to this the ‘Cinderella’ fantasy of going from scullery maid to princess by associating with a rich man, and it’s really easy to see how Epstein and his circle could exploit so many young women and get away with it.

The Quniverse’s comic book view of the world makes it exponentially harder to solve the real problems that create Jeffrey Epsteins. Teaching young women that Cinderella isn’t realistic is tedious and requires the teachers themselves to examine their own opinions. It involves abandoning the idea that women’s worth is primarily our looks and not our brains. It involves really boring crap like changing tax laws and hiring more SEC auditors to enforce the laws about investment transparency. Mostly it requires us to reconsider our views of celebrities and the role of women in society. Q doesn’t want that because that makes them at least partially responsible for this. They aren’t heroes; they’re just people, and nothing scares them more than being ‘just people.’

1. The indictment text itself does mention a ‘network,’ but that network is one of underage victims, not adult customers. The only ‘customer’ noted in that indictment is Epstein himself.