The investigation into child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein could haunt U.S. politics for years to come and is exposing fault lines in the political system where rich and powerful individuals on both sides of the political fence are battling to avoid accountability in the long-sunning scandal, according to U.S. political analysts who spoke with China Global Television Network (CGTN) on Monday.
Late last year, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) began publishing documents on its website related to Epstein, who was arrested in 2019 on federal charges of sex trafficking but later died in jail before standing trial.
The initial batch of documents included multiple references to former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, prompting accusations that the DOJ was selectively releasing materials to deflect attention from prominent figures, including President Donald Trump and others in his Republican camp.
In the millions of documents released since then, it has become clear that Epstein maintained close ties with numerous prominent figures in U.S. political and business circles, both Democrats and Republicans.
Clinton, and his wife former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, are scheduled to appear before a U.S. Congressional committee to testify about their relationship with Epstein.
Jadan Horyn, a political analyst, says the scheduled appearance by the Clintons has put their traditional foes on the Republican side of politics on the back foot.
"I think Republicans would actually love to televise the hearing, but at the same time, what they understand is that the testimony could implicate high-ranking Republicans either from the Clinton era or current Republicans that are elected, notwithstanding President Trump just talking about other elected officials," Horyn said.
"So I think Republicans are, they're playing it safe here because the danger is, of course, that the Clintons could say something that could implicate them, that could implicate various individuals that they receive funding from, and the collateral damage, once released to the public without being either filtered or refocused with questions, could result in this scandal just kind of erupting even more. And that I would say is the real fear, right? You know, when we're dealing with, you know, allegations and associations in different individuals who may have had knowledge, all it takes is one person to speak, then an additional person does and the collateral damage that rules from that is not something that I think either the president or the party on the Republican side wants to have dominating the headlines as they're going into this election year," he said.
Republicans, who would normally relish a chance to denounce the Clintons, are now reluctant to publicly criticize them, according to Joel Rubin, who was a senior U.S. State Department official during the administration of President Barack Obama.
"Republicans don't want to humiliate Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton in public? Since when is that the case? And now President Trump is saying nice things about them. Clearly, he's petrified of what they may say. And so there's like this conspiracy of silence all around Washington and in the power centers across the board. And that's why we're not seeing the calls for accountability. And I think the problem is that there are millions of pages in black and white. This is not going away. We may very well be looking at this for years to come, and so accountability that still is yet to be seen in the United States," Rubin said.
Douglass Sloan, Principal of National Capitol Strategy Group, said that meaningful answers regarding the Epstein case will likely only come after Trump leaves office, as he is currently using his office to deflect attention from the issue.
"And that's when we're probably going to get most of the answers, because right now Trump is stonewalling. He's saying there's more important things that we need to be focused on. You know, look over here, look at ICE in Minnesota. You know, he will bring up any number of things to try and distract us from the Epstein files. But, luckily, we've been able to maintain singular focus on this issue. But we may not really see any true movement and get down to the real brass tacks of what happened in this horrible, horrible sex trafficking until Trump is out of office. So, no, I don't think the Democrats are overplaying their hands. The Democrats need to be more aggressive. They need to go balls to the wall in terms of demanding accountability from anyone that's been involved in this, including President Clinton," Sloan said.
Epstein investigation could haunt U.S. politics for years to come: analysts
