Stephen Fowler

sort of hotbed for a lot of other conspiracies down the line.

Epstein was asked to weigh in on cryptocurrency before cryptocurrency was a real thing.

And he drew the line at this concept of a rug pull, which is where you put a lot of money into crypto, get other people to put a lot of money and then take it all away and leave investors with nothing and personally profit.

And

tangled web of people and ideas and things that he was involved with and weighed in on and again all of these things happened after he registered as a sex offender and the through line in all of this more so than a neat story tied up in a bow of yep here's the Epstein files this is what it is is just this reckoning with people in power regardless of party and ideology that exist and kind of have rules that are different from everybody else

not really anything new.

It's important to go back in time and remember that there have been several other earlier releases of these Epstein files from the Justice Department and information turned over to the House Oversight Committee from Epstein's estate through a subpoena.

In those emails and photos and text messages and things, there were some pictures from a time Bill Clinton went on a trip with Epstein in Asia and

And there's pictures of Bill Clinton with Epstein.

There's pictures of him hanging out and lounging and things.

And from there, it was one of the first things to come out from that big batch of correspondence that Republicans highlighted.

It has blossomed into this demand that the House Oversight Committee's investigation into Epstein should have Bill Clinton come and testify and Hillary Clinton, too.

Current President Donald Trump will become former President Donald Trump again.

And reading between the lines here, plenty of Democrats in Congress are perfectly OK with it either being come testify or we'll hold you in contempt and applying that down the road to Trump or his family or his cabinet or you name it.

You know, we're very deferential in this country to power.

It's a question that I don't think is going to be answered, and I don't think can be answered satisfactorily, given the way everything is played out.

Earlier this week on All Things Considered, Scott Detrow interviewed Annie Farmer, who was one of the women who accused Epstein, and this is what she had to say about finding her name and seeing other names in the files.

The point of this is that there are hundreds of women, many of whom were minors, that said that a powerful man and powerful men did unspeakable things to them.

And that has been filtered through the lens of, does this hurt or help the president?

Does this hurt or help Democrats and Republicans in the midterms?