The Epstein case: A portrait of American justice in failure

Editor's note: Yu Ran is a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of either CGTN or Robert Morris University.

Since the U.S. Department of Justice released its largest-ever tranche of Epstein files on January 30, the case has dominated global headlines. The release, comprising 3.5 million pages, 2,000 videos, and roughly 180,000 images, produced not a reckoning but a fog. The prosecution record remained startlingly thin. To date, only two people have faced criminal charges in connection with Jeffrey Epstein's network: Epstein himself, who died in custody, and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.

Even as public appetite for answers remains fierce, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche stated in early February that the released files don't necessarily provide grounds to prosecute anyone – a quiet attempt to close the book on a story that refuses to end.

What the Epstein case exposes is a dual failure: U.S. law enforcement failing to do its job, and the constitutional balance of power between branches of government failing to hold.

Pride and prejudice at the DOJ

The mass release came roughly six weeks after the Department of Justice (DOJ) missed the deadline set in the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law by U.S. President Donald Trump on November 19, 2025. The release was not voluntary; it was compelled. Without the bipartisan pressure campaign led by U.S. House of Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, who forced the bill to a floor vote, it is difficult to say when – or if – these files would have seen the light of day.

Even then, the release covered only about half the total files, with the DOJ describing the rest as falling into "limited categories that are not eligible for release."

The redactions themselves proved deeply problematic, shielding prominent figures from the U.S., U.K., and beyond. It took Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie appearing in person at the Justice Department to review unredacted files before the DOJ eventually relented and disclosed, among others, the name of former Victoria's Secret CEO Les Wexner. That a federal agency required a congressional in-person visit before complying with its own legal obligations speaks for itself.

Meanwhile, the department appeared determined to draw a line under the matter. Deputy Attorney General Blanche stated, "it isn't a crime to party with Mr. Epstein." From the agency entrusted with enforcing federal law, that's less an investigation and more like an argument for doing nothing.

A systemic failure brewing for decades

The first known accusation against Epstein dates to 1996, when Maria Farmer reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that she and her then-16-year-old sister had been sexually assaulted by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

It took until 2008 for any prosecution, and justice, when it came, was a hollow shell. Through a secret non-prosecution agreement, Epstein pleaded guilty to just two state solicitation charges, escaping federal sex trafficking charges that could have carried a life sentence. He served 13 months, allowed to leave his cell for up to 12 hours a day. The arrangement was later ruled to have violated federal law.

In July 2019, Epstein was finally charged with federal sex trafficking. A month later, he was found dead in his Manhattan cell in what officials ruled an apparent suicide. The circumstances have never been convincingly resolved: Missing footage, transferred cellmates, sleeping guards, and a forensic pathologist who argued the injuries were more consistent with homicide than suicide.

From Farmer's unanswered report in 1996 to the circumstances of Epstein's death in 2019, the DOJ failed at every stage. Had it acted on that first complaint alone, more than a thousand documented victims might have been spared.

The collapse of the balance of powers

The bipartisan passage of the Transparency Act looked, on paper, like a rare moment of Congress asserting real oversight. In practice, the DOJ treated that authority with open contempt – releasing files late, redacting them selectively, and standing by a 2008 plea deal already found legally improper. Congress passed the law; the executive branch decided how much of it to honor.

The deeper problem is structural. The Founders designed the separation of powers without anticipating organized political parties. Today, the two parties function in many ways as a fourth branch, one that sits above the constitutional three. When partisan interest consistently overrides institutional responsibility, the result is more hearings that generate heat but no light.

Josef Mahoney, professor at East China Normal University, told CGTN that the U.S. has seen extreme politicization across its institutions: the Department of Justice, the courts, even the FBI.

The Epstein case is, in the end, not merely a story about one man's crimes. It raises the question of whether the system protected those crimes, and whether a political class is more invested in its own survival than in justice.

As David Ferguson, honorary chief English editor of Foreign Languages Press, told CGTN, the fundamental problem the West faces is that this could destroy the whole Western moral framework and the whole claim to Western moral authority.

More than 1,000 documented victims have waited decades for that answer. If the release of millions of files has taught us anything, it is this: transparency without consequences is performance. Until the DOJ abandons its posture of strategic inertia, until Congress treats oversight as a duty rather than a partisan weapon, and until those who enabled Epstein face real accountability, the public's faith in the justice system will not begin to be rebuilt.

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