Fascinated & Repulsed

The 'Eyes Wide Shut' fascination with Jeffrey Epstein begs the question: Do the rich and powerful live by different rules?

Sex scandals and Washington, D.C., go hand in hand. Here’s a jog down memory lane:

• Sen. Charles Robb, D-Va., caught in 1991 in a hotel room with a former Miss Virginia, Tai Collins, getting a “massage.”

• Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. hired and boinked a male prostitute in 1985.

• Sen. Gary Hart, D-Colo., poked Donna Rice while he was married.

• Rep. Gerry Studds, D-Mass., had an affair with a 17-year-old congressional page and was censured for it in 1983.

• Sen. John Edwards had an affair and produced a child with Rielle Hunter while his wife was dying of cancer.

• Rep. Anthony Weiner, among other pervy things, sent dick pics to a teenager.

The list goes on from Rep. Eric Massa, R-NY, Sen David Vitter, R-La, Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., and, of course, the infamous horndog Bill Clinton getting a blowjob from an intern in the Oval Office.

But let’s face it, as jaded as we might be about sex and powerful leaders in Washington, there's something especially intriguing about the Jeffrey Epstein case. It’s on a different level.

There’s a “The Great Gatsby” mystery about this dude. He built huge wealth without good reason and created a lavish sexual island playground in which he lured the world’s most influential people.

Then, suddenly, he winds up dead on a U.S. prison cell floor under very suspicious circumstances?

An “Eyes Wide Shut” culture flourished unchecked around Epstein, in which he and the rich and powerful he connected with lived by another set of rules than the rest of us.

We are both fascinated and repulsed.

The U.S. government this week released a batch of 20,000 emails from Epstein. They’ve already ensnared England’s Prince Andrew, Harvard President and former Bill Clinton and Barack Obama confidante Larry Summers, the Congressional delegate from the Virgin Islands, Rep. Stacey Plaskett, an exec at Goldman Sachs, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

As you read this, journalists search through the documents. In the last several hours, reporters have found that between 1990 and 2018, Epstein financially contributed to Hillary Clinton, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and a host of other prominent Democrats.

There will no doubt be Republicans in those emails, too.

President Donald Trump, who has his own sex issues, is mentioned in the Epstein files, but so far only as a guy Epstein hated and wanted to hurt. Nevertheless, Trump signed a bill to release all the files. We should be seeing those in the next 30 days.

Stand by for a lot more names to drop. Some will be innocents caught in the crossfire. Others not so much.

If the rich and powerful do, in fact, live under different rules than the rest of us, we’ll want to know every detail and seek to administer long-overdue justice.

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