Release the Epstein files, then do away with the 'Epstein class'

We are being ruled by the “Epstein class,” and voters deserve to know the details of that particular scandal, and to be able to expect better of their leaders in the larger sense.

- ANITA CHABRIA COLUMNIST

PROTESTERS call for the release of the Epstein files in Washington.

(KEVIN WOLF Associated Press)

That's the message we'll be hearing a lot in the coming weeks and months now that Democrats have successfully moved forward their effort to release the full investigation into former President Trump buddy Jeffrey Epstein.

“When you take a step back, you have a country where an elite governing class has gotten away with impunity, and shafted the working class in this country, shafted factory towns, shafted rural communities,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) told me Wednesday.

He represents parts of Silicon Valley and is one of the authors of the House push to release the full government investigation into Epstein. But in the Epstein case, he also sees an opportunity to reach voters with a larger promise of change.

"What Epstein is about is saying, 'We reject the Epstein class governing America today," "Khanna said.

How appropriately strange for these days would it be if Epstein, who faced sex trafficking charges at the time of his death, provided the uniting message Democrats have been searching for? "Epstein and economics" sounds like a stretch on the surface, but it is increasingly clear that Americans of all political stripes are tired of the rich getting richer, and bolder. The Epstein files are the bipartisan embodiment of that discontent.

Our collective frustration with what can appear only as a cover-up to benefit the wealthy and powerful is an unexpected bit of glue that binds regular Americans, because the corruption and hubris of our oligarchy is increasingly undeniable and galling.