(MENAFN- The Rio Times) For years, Americans were told that the truth about Jeffrey Epstein was locked away in court seals and government archives.

Now, after an overwhelming vote in both chambers of Congress, a new law orders the U.S. Department of Justice to start releasing those files – thousands of pages and huge digital archives detailing a sex-trafficking network that touched finance, academia and politics.

On the surface, this looks like a rare moment of unity. Lawmakers from left and right agreed that victims had waited long enough and that the public deserved answers. But the road to this point says a lot about how power really works in Washington.

Under the previous administration, the Justice Department disclosed only a narrow slice of the material and leaned heavily on legal arguments about grand-jury secrecy and victim privacy.

To many ordinary Americans this sounded less like justice and more like protection for people with the right friends, the right lawyers and the right party connections.



When the current administration came in promising to“clean up” institutions, expectations rose – and were quickly disappointed.
Epstein files expose limits of transparency
The new Justice Department released one small batch of documents, then effectively shut the door again, insisting there was no neat“client list” and little more to say.

That only deepened suspicions that a broader circle of elites, especially on one side of the political spectrum, would never be fully exposed.

The backlash did not come from TV studios or think tanks, but from voters, independent journalists and a handful of determined members of Congress who forced a vote to pry the files open.

At the same time, the president tried to push the spotlight onto famous names linked to Epstein in the past, including former U.S. president Bill Clinton, star economist Larry Summers and Reid Hoffman, a billionaire donor – all long associated with the same political camp now preaching institutional trust.

For expats and foreigners, the Epstein saga is more than a lurid crime story. It is a lesson in how a wealthy democracy can wrap uncomfortable truths in process.

It shows how parts of the establishment instinctively shield their own. Public pressure, often coming from voices dismissed as“populist,” is sometimes the only thing that forces the curtain to move.

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