The outstanding question about Epstein, Trump

For those of us with a sincere, nonpartisan interest (I swear) in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, it was a good week: First the Democrats, with an eye to hammering Donald Trump, released a few redacted Epstein emails in which the president's name featured prominently; then Republicans, presumably with an eye to burying the Democratic leak, released thousands more Epstein documents. With this kind of tag-team effort, we'll have the whole story out in the open by Christmas!

- Ross Douthat

A word of caution, though, for those liberals who are relative newcomers to the Epstein saga, for so long a mostly conservative fixation. There is a dark conspiratorial thrill that comes with encountering the reality, amply displayed in the latest round of disclosures, that so many American elites were perfectly comfortable being buddy-buddy with a trafficker of teenage girls.

And because both right and left have pivoted away from the Bill Clinton-era neoliberal centre, the fact that Epstein had (to quote the left-wing writer Jeet Heer) "very banal centrist politics with the same gestalt as 90% of US elite since 1990s" makes him an ideal symbol of elite perfidy for both progressives and populists alike.

But it's important not to let that conspiratorial thrill outrun the actual facts. The new tranche of information confirms, yet again, the moral squalor of various powerful Americans.

But it still leaves us short of definitive answers to the outstanding Epstein questions: Did other powerful men have sex with the underage girls that he trafficked? What were his connections, if any, to the world of intelligence? And what unrevealed details have made Mr Trump so intent on preventing further disclosure?