QAnon Was Right About Epstein
There’s an elite cabal of child sex traffickers, QAnon conspiracies claimed. As more of the Epstein files emerge from the darkness, this scandal certainly appears QAnonish. But unlike QAnon, let us be careful with how we present the facts.
Some have selectively looked at the Epstein files and concluded there’s nothing to see here.
“The Jeffrey Epstein files were supposed to uncover the financier’s sex-trafficking and blackmail operation. They haven’t, for the excellent reason that there was no such operation,” Barton Swaim wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal last week.
We shouldn’t give up so easily on seeking justice for the victims. We still don’t have a full picture, given the many redactions in the files. And the fallout has continued apace both before and after Swaim’s op-ed went to print.
The executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels announced his retirement.
The CEO of DP World stepped down.
The CEO of Apollo Global Management stepped down.
The World Economic Forum will be conducting an internal review of it’s president and chief executive.
The chair of Paul Weiss resigned.
The general counsel of Goldman Sachs will step down.
And just this morning, former prince Andrew was arrested and faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
The top story in today’s Wall Street Journal (gift link) reports that Epstein accomplice Jean-Luc Brunel was prepared to testify against Epstein in 2016 but suddenly backed out for unknown reasons. The US Justice Department knew about this but didn’t open an investigation until two years later after the Miami Herald brought attention to Epstein’s crimes. Epstein was finally arrested in 2019. Brunel was arrested in France in 2020 and committed suicide in jail in 2022. French prosecutors are now reexamining the Epstein case in light of these new revelations.
And then of course there is our president, who continues to urge us to look away, which inspires me to do the opposite.
Investigative journalist Roger Sollenberger reported this week that the FBI interviewed a victim four times in 2019 who alleged that Donald Trump had sexually and violently assaulted her in the early 1980s. This information has mysteriously disappeared from the FBI website. Further, the allegations match a 2019 lawsuit against Epstein that led to a settlement. (Warning: the details contained in these links are graphic and contain descriptions of rape.)
Russell Moore was right when he wrote last week for Christianity Today. “Despite how much is still confusing, we can also see this: On at least one important point, the most outlandish theories were right. There really is a global conspiracy of wealthy, elite sexual perverts fleecing the masses. And many of them were people building a following by telling others that there is a global conspiracy of wealthy, elite sexual perverts fleecing the masses.”
Keep in mind, however, there are important differences between investigative journalists and QAnon conspirators. In our “Truth Advocates Handbook” (which you can get by signing up for our main email list here), we use this definition of a conspiracy theory: “A conspiracy theory refers to an untrue or unproven accusation that a small group of powerful individuals (cabal) are secretly using their power for their own self interest and against the common good.”
Note, a conspiracy theory isn’t necessarily false, but it is unproven. If a conspiracy theory is proven, it’s no longer a conspiracy theory and becomes a fact. But being partly right about one thing doesn’t make QAnon conspirators any more credible. It’s still a network of fabulists for whom many claims have been not only unproven, but disproven.
So be careful with what you share about this ongoing scandal. Make sure your sources are credible. Care about the truth. Avoid hearsay and share what is proven.
Finish, then, with lying
and let each man tell his neighbour the truth,
for we are all part of the same body.
Ephesians 4:25 [JBP]
What Else We’re Reading
Justin Giboney: “We Become Our Friends’ Enemies by Telling Them the Truth”
And thou shall not get caught on the wrong side of whatever issue is virusing through social media! Even commercial products like Super Bowl halftime shows can become high-stakes litmus tests where one must assent to a meaning assigned by the mob. Don’t let your tribe take any blame. Always accuse the other side of the most sinister motives. Suppress your deeper questions. Accept lies if that’s what it takes to keep your status in your group.
What does this system of perverse incentives, stereotypes, and partiality look like in practice? It looks like conservative officials and influencers conflating protests with riots and dismissing protesters’ causes out of hand. It looks like progressive custodians of culture comparing every other conflict to Jim Crow and daring anyone to question it. It looks like downplaying the violence done by us to exaggerate the violence done by them. It looks like only selectively recognizing immorality and injustice.
Or ask Beth Moore, Russell Moore, and J. D. Greear what happens when you refuse to condone colorblind and MAGA myths moving among white evangelicals. We become our friends’ enemies by telling them the truth (Gal. 4:16). In some circles, having the right politics or the right race narrative has become more important than right doctrine and right ethics. Religious heretics may be condoned, but cultural dissidents are unforgivable. We pronounce right and wrong according to identity and ideology instead of honestly testing the spirits (1 John 4:1–3) and assessing the fruit (Matt. 7:15–20).
Bonnie Kristian: “The Popular Progressive Podcast Calling Evangelicals ‘Cancer’”
Scorn heaped on evangelicals is not new. In 1994, Yale University legal scholar Stephen L. Carter wrote that secular progressives saw evangelicals as “wild-eyed zealots.” Since then national polarization has only increased, and all sides of the political debate have vilified their opponents. For the left, evangelicals provide a ready target.
“People on the left side of the political spectrum need an enemy,” political scientist Ryan Burge told me. “They need to personify what the other side is, and because white evangelicals are so prominent in America, they have become the totem for all the liberal ire against conservatives in America,” a “magnet for all this criticism.”
The dynamic this sets up is corrosive to public life, and not just when it comes to religion. The practice of using evangelicals (or any group) as a foil encourages Americans to think about one another not as neighbors but as generalized “forces,” Michael Wear, who directed outreach to faith-based groups in Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign and is now president of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, told me. “The political and social consequences of this kind of rhetoric only increases the distance between people,” Wear said, “and the sense of embattlement they feel.”
Ian Bassin: “How much money has Trump made as president? The answer should worry us all.”
Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan — the UAE’s national security adviser, a senior royal, and the head of one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds — purchased a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial for $500 million. Of that, $187 million reportedly flowed to Trump family entities, with additional tens of millions to entities tied to Steve Witkoff, who had recently been named Middle East envoy.
The reported UAE payment to the Trump family dwarfs the roughly $400,000 involved in Teapot Dome ($5 million in today’s dollars) or the roughly $1.5 million generated by sales of Hunter Biden’s artwork — another episode that raised concerns about the monetization of proximity to power. More troublingly, the UAE transaction involves money from a foreign official flowing into enterprises benefiting the president’s family.
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Wow, I never thought about it this way. Hurray QAnon??? I'm not sure, but it's a nice post.