The Epstein rot goes deep

THE Epstein files offer America the opposite of closure. They are the latest widening of a scandal that has become a leitmotif of our time – not only because half the material remains unreleased. A budding Vladimir Lenin or Benito Mussolini might see the files as kindling awaiting a revolutionary spark.

On the basis that politics is downstream of culture, today’s public moral outrage will further corrode faith in US democracy. How can you throw the bums out when they span the system?

By that measure, US President Donald Trump is a short-term beneficiary of the latest three million-plus-page release. Though he, his wife and his Mar-a-Lago club are referred to 38,000 times, he is in sufficiently broad company that others are taking as much of the airtime.