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Indeed, Roberts, with the Daily Mail being her prime outlet, emerges as the most vocal accuser—and, in fact, the some total of the current story and attention. That is, there is no story without her and what is being billed as her memoir of her “sex slavery” with Epstein, written ten years after the fact. Along with the Dershowitz and Prince Andrew charges, Roberts puts, with rather some narrative detail, both Clinton and Al and Tipper Gore on the island—and in fact Clinton, apparently with the acquiescence of the Secret Service, flying in a helicopter piloted by Epstein’s girlfriend, an amateur pilot. Epstein’s lawyers say that not only have Clinton and the Gores never been to the Epstein Island, but that there is easy proof of this in secret service records, which would seem to make the memoir opportunistic or hallucinatory fiction. The FBI, in a recent filing, has argued that Roberts should not be party to the suit against the government because she refused to cooperate with the government in its investigation in 2007, hence has no standing as a victim. (At the same time, the FBI included her on the list of 40 victims with whom it mandated Epstein reach a settlement.) It is hard to find a more hyperbolic intersection of media and lawyers then in Epstein’s case. Edwards, over the six years of his law suit, tries to depose Clinton, Donald Trump, and Dershowitz—almost all of his targets coming directly from the original Vanity Fair and New York Magazine articles about Epstein. In addition to Prince Andrew as a British hot button, first connected to Epstein through Roberts’ interview with the Daily Mail in 2010, Clinton takes on a new role as Hillary spoiler through his connection, real or imagined, to Epstein and sex slaves. Almost everybody identified in any story about Epstein is approached by other media seeking to write about Epstein, often with financial incentives. No new stories or even new details emerge. Every aspect of the current story is based on court filings describing events that may or may not have taken place prior to 2007. It’s as though a kind of ground-hog day of moral opprobrium, a desire to repeat and to savor a new the old details. A recent Reuters story identified a charity that Epstein has not given money to in 15 years that said if he does give again, they would give it back. The world cleanly divides, with Epstein (and friends) behind secure walls and the Mail and social media and upholders of new norms ever more HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022764