Turkeys Are Served

Turkeys have been everywhere this Thanksgiving season, as they are every year. The freezer bin in the back of Publix has been overflowing with frozen versions, and fresh ones in the refrigerated aisle.Holiday displays in stores and restaurants have featured them in all shapes and sizes, helping build anticipation and excitement for what many of us call “turkey day.” 

This Thanksgiving season, however, another poultry is making a run at overturning turkeys as the reigning bird, and that’s chickens. Specifically, the chickens that are coming home to roost in the Jeffrey Epstein saga. 

And I’m not referring to the political chickens that will likely come home to roost for both parties as events unfold in the coming months, but rather, the moral chickens that are coming home to roost for the rich and powerful men (mostly) who did unspeakably evil things to more than one thousand young women, and used their money and influence to cover their tracks and escape accountability. 

As much as both parties have tried to make political hay of the release of the “Epstein Files” - during last year’s election (Republicans), and through most of the president’s second term this year(Democrats)-what the parties failed to realize, until very recently, is that it was never politics that was animating the issue among most Americans. It was the galling nature of the global, underage sex trafficking ring that Epstein and his girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell ran, how far its tentacles wrapped around the world’s rich and famous, and how few people were ever held accountable. 

That changed in mid-November when the House of Representatives voted 427-1 in favor of the “Epstein Files Transparency Act,” a bipartisan bill calling for the release of the files, with the Senate passing the bill by unanimous consent the same day.The margin of victory was historic and illustrated there was virtually no political opposition to the bill when push finally came to shove, with President Trump signing the bill into law within days, despite his prior opposition to it. 

Give Epstein’s victims most of the credit for this dramatic turn of events.  Day after day, for months now, they’ve taken to the airwaves to bravely tell their stories and plead for help in righting the wrongs that were perpetrated on them by elite business executives, bankers, politicians, entertainers, acclaimed scientists, and royalty. Most notable was the story of Virginia Guiffre, who was groomed by Epstein and Maxwell when she was in her teens and was trafficked to and physically and sexually abused by some of the most powerful men in the world. Her memoir Nobody’s Girl was published posthumously in October, following her suicide in April. 

I just finished it and admit it's a very difficult book to read: from accounts of her sexual and physical abuse as a child by her father and his friend; to her struggles with drug abuse as a young teen; and most certainly through her years trapped in the Epstein-Maxwell web of sex trafficking and her efforts to hold them accountable. 

But it’s also important to read as it’s so similar to the stories of the hundreds of women Epstein and Maxwell exploited: products of broken families growing up, most suffering from some sort of abuse; insecurities and human frailties from lives of struggle; susceptibility to grooming and financial manipulation as an escape from seemingly dead-end life prospects at a young age; frustration at a system that willfully ignored them.   

There was a weird catharsis and almost calm after the vote to release the Epstein Files, as folks on both sides of the aisle settled in to assess the likely damage to come and ponder next steps in the 30-day window the law gives the Department of Justice to release the files. There have been worries on the left about “loopholes” in the legislation that could allow the DOJ to stall the release or selectively redact the files for political gains, but I’m honestly not too concerned about that. For the first time in many years, the people have spoken in one collective voice, and they’ve said they’ve had enough. And several Republican senators have warned the DOJ not to delay the release. 

The one thing I do feel pretty confident about is that this story is not only far from over, it will only grow, with the fallout getting increasingly messy in the weeks and months ahead, as it should. Holding the powerful accountable is always a struggle, but the momentum toward that end will be too great to stop. 

I was talking to my sister in Virginia the other day. She has raised chickens for years now, is really good at it, and is a master baker using their fresh eggs for professional-level wedding, birthday, and other celebration cakes.  It was dusk when we spoke, and her chickens were making a noticeable racket in the background, clucking and crowing like all get out. I asked her what was up, and she said they get really noisy as they settle down in their coop to roost for the night.   

I suspect it’s going to get really noisy around the Epstein Files, with much discomfort and squirming to follow as the roosting unfolds. And that’s a good thing.   

It’s taken decades for Epstein’s victims to see a glimmer of accountability for their perpetrators, but as Martin Luther King Jr. so eloquently put it: The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.