On January 30, 2026, the Department of Justice released more than three million pages of documents, two thousand videos, and 180,000 images from the investigations into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.1 The material included FBI diagrams mapping Epstein’s network of victims, sworn depositions naming powerful men, flight logs, financial records, and photographs recovered from his homes in Manhattan, Palm Beach, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. For anyone paying attention, the contents confirmed what survivors had been saying for two decades: a convicted sex trafficker operated a criminal enterprise that recruited and abused children, and the people around him either participated or looked the other way.
We all felt the same thing reading it. And then we all watched the same nothing happen.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters that federal prosecutors had reviewed the material and found “nothing in there that allowed us to prosecute anybody.”2 The Department of Justice had already announced in July 2025 that it found no incriminating client list and would release no further files voluntarily, a decision Congress eventually overrode by passing the Epstein Files Transparency Act with overwhelming bipartisan support.3 After two decades of investigation, after 3.5 million pages of evidence, after the abuse and trafficking of dozens of children documented in sworn testimony, the federal government’s final answer was: we cannot act.
That answer may contain a grain of truth. Flight logs, financial records, and decades-old testimony do not automatically translate into criminal convictions, and the existing record may not yet clear the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt bar for any particular defendant. But the answer only holds if we accept that no further questions need to be asked, that 3.5 million pages of raw material represent the end of the inquiry rather than its beginning. The real problem is structural, and once we understand the structure, we can see the door that has been open this entire time.
Federal prosecutors answer to the Attorney General, who serves at the pleasure of the President. This chain of command means that every federal prosecution of a politically connected individual runs through the executive branch. A president can fire a U.S. attorney. A president can pardon a federal conviction. A president can direct the Department of Justice to investigate political opponents while declining to pursue allies. We do not need to speculate about whether this happens; we watched it happen. In November 2025, at President Trump’s urging, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan would investigate Epstein’s ties to several prominent Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.4 Epstein’s survivors had not accused any of these men of misconduct. The investigation targeted political opponents, not alleged criminals.
Meanwhile, the president himself appears over a thousand times in files his administration spent months delaying and heavily redacting before declaring them clean. The individuals whose names appear in sworn victim testimony alongside descriptions of specific criminal conduct remain unquestioned by any law enforcement agency. The gate to federal prosecution is locked, and the people holding the key have demonstrated exactly how they intend to use it.
The federal government is succeeding at protecting powerful people. That is the job now. Epstein spent decades building relationships across every institution that would need to function independently for federal accountability to work. His documented contacts span all three branches of government, the donor class that funds political campaigns on both sides, and the executives who run major media companies. The system does not need a formal conspiracy to protect itself. It only needs each person with exposure to act in their own interest, and the federal government gives them every tool to do exactly that.
But the federal government is not the only government in the United States. And this is where the architecture changes.
In June 2019, the Supreme Court decided Gamble v. United States and reaffirmed, by a 7-2 vote, the dual sovereignty doctrine that has governed American criminal law for 170 years.5 The ruling is straightforward. The federal government and the state governments are separate sovereigns. Each derives its authority from an independent source: the federal government from the Constitution, the states from their inherent police power preserved by the Tenth Amendment. When a person commits an act that violates both federal and state law, that act constitutes two separate offenses under two separate legal systems. Neither prosecution bars the other.
For our purposes, the critical implication is this: a state prosecution for crimes committed within that state’s borders operates entirely outside the federal chain of command. The President of the United States cannot fire a state attorney general. The President cannot pardon a state conviction. The President cannot direct a state investigation to target political enemies or protect political friends. The state’s criminal authority exists in a jurisdiction the White House cannot reach.
Jeffrey Epstein committed crimes in multiple states. Survivors have testified under oath about abuse in Florida, New York, and New Mexico.6 The individuals who allegedly participated in or facilitated that abuse also operated in those states. Every one of those states has its own criminal code, its own prosecutors, and its own courts. And several of those states have already taken steps to ensure that the passage of time does not shield predators. Florida eliminated the statute of limitations for human trafficking involving minors.7 New York eliminated the statute of limitations for first-degree rape and extended it dramatically for other sexual offenses against children through the 2019 Child Victims Act.8 The legal pathways exist. No state has walked through them.
Other countries, watching this unfold, have not waited. Turkey’s Ankara Public Prosecutor opened an inquiry after the files referenced the transport of minors from Turkey. Lithuania launched a law enforcement investigation into potential human trafficking. Latvia’s president called for an investigation after Latvian names appeared in the documents.9 Three foreign nations read the same files we read and opened criminal investigations. Not one American state has done the same.
To understand what model legislation could accomplish, consider what New York already proved was possible in an entirely different context. The Martin Act, passed in 1921 and codified as Article 23-A of New York’s General Business Law, grants the state Attorney General extraordinary power to investigate securities fraud.10 What makes the Martin Act exceptional is what it does not require. To open an investigation and compel testimony, the Attorney General does not need to prove intent to defraud. To secure a misdemeanor conviction, the state does not need to demonstrate that the defendant acted with knowledge of wrongdoing. The law demands only that a material misrepresentation or omission occurred. The Wall Street Journal once called it “the worst law in America.”11 Wall Street called it that because it worked.
When Eliot Spitzer revived the Martin Act in the early 2000s, he forced the ten largest investment firms in New York to pay $1.4 billion in fines.10 The Act gave state prosecutors the ability to subpoena documents and compel witness testimony without demonstrating probable cause, to conduct investigations without disclosing their details, and to keep proceedings confidential to prevent subjects from coordinating their responses.12 Federal regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission had access to the same evidence and the same suspects. They chose not to act with comparable force. The state filled the gap because the state had a tool designed to fill it.
The Epstein Justice Act would apply this same structural logic to a different category of crime. The legislation would not lower the standard for conviction. A jury would still need to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. What the legislation would lower is the threshold for opening an investigation: compelling testimony under oath, issuing subpoenas for records, and accessing documents that currently sit in federal databases where no state prosecutor has touched them. The distinction matters enormously. We are not proposing that states convict anyone on a weaker standard. We are proposing that states start asking questions that the federal government has refused to ask.
The Epstein Justice Act would do four things.
First, it would grant the state attorney general independent authority to open criminal investigations into conduct described in the Epstein files when that conduct allegedly occurred within the state’s borders. This authority would not depend on a federal referral, a federal request, or federal cooperation. The state would act on its own constitutional authority as a separate sovereign.
Second, it would establish an investigative subpoena power modeled on the Martin Act, allowing the attorney general to compel testimony and the production of documents without first demonstrating probable cause to a grand jury. Witnesses who refuse to comply would face contempt proceedings. When witnesses invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, the attorney general can compel their testimony under a grant of use immunity, the same mechanism prosecutors have used to dismantle organized crime networks for decades: the testimony itself cannot be used against the witness, but what it reveals about others can be pursued independently. This tool exists in New York securities law today. Extending it to sex trafficking investigations requires only the political will to do so.
Third, it would create a formal mechanism for states to request and receive relevant federal investigative materials under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The 3.5 million pages released to the public represent raw material that state investigators have not yet processed through the lens of state criminal statutes. The model legislation would direct the attorney general to assign a dedicated team to review these materials for evidence of state-level crimes.
Fourth, it would eliminate the statute of limitations prospectively for sex trafficking offenses involving minors and preserve the state’s authority to prosecute any existing offense whose limitations period has not yet expired. The Supreme Court held in Stogner v. California that the Constitution prohibits reviving a prosecution after the limitations clock has already run out, and the legislation respects that boundary.13 But the boundary is narrower than it appears. Florida already classifies human trafficking involving minors as a life felony carrying no limitations period. New York eliminated the statute of limitations for first-degree rape and extended it dramatically for other sexual offenses against children. For offenses that remain within their limitations windows, investigation should begin immediately.
These investigations carry consequences well beyond the specific charges they might produce. The moment a state attorney general begins issuing subpoenas, every person who visited Epstein’s properties or traveled on his planes faces the prospect that a state prosecutor will put them under oath and ask what they saw, who else was in the room, and what they knew. The witness must decide between truth and perjury in a proceeding no presidential pardon can reach. When multiple states investigate simultaneously, no single phone call to a single political patron can shut the process down. And investigators pursuing trafficking routinely discover evidence of other offenses along the way: money laundering, tax fraud, obstruction, witness tampering. People who committed crimes decades ago tend to commit additional crimes trying to conceal them, and those newer offenses carry limitations clocks of their own.
The legislation works whether it passes or not. Democrats can introduce the Epstein Justice Act in every state legislature in the country. In states where it passes, investigations begin. In states where Republican leadership blocks it, voters learn exactly who refused to investigate a convicted child sex trafficker’s network and why. A plain-language summary of the bill, with the full text attached, can go to every mailbox in every district where a legislator killed it in committee. There is no comfortable way to explain that vote. “We had concerns about the procedural framework” is not an answer that survives contact with a constituent who just read four pages explaining that the bill simply asks states to investigate credible allegations of child sex trafficking. Every no vote becomes a campaign ad the opposition does not even need to write.
A week after the Justice Department released 3.5 million pages of evidence documenting the sexual trafficking of children, Turkey opened an investigation. Lithuania opened an investigation. Latvia opened an investigation. The United States federal government told us it found nothing to prosecute.
We can accept that answer, or we can recognize it for what it is: the predictable output of a system in which the same political class that socializes with billionaires also controls the prosecutors who would charge them. The federal government’s refusal to act is not a verdict on the evidence. It is a confession about the institution.
But the states answer to a different authority. Their governors and attorneys general face their own voters. Their criminal codes cover the same conduct. Their courts carry the same power to subpoena, indict, and convict. And no president, no attorney general in Washington, no pardon can reach a state prosecution for a state crime. The Supreme Court settled this in Gamble. The Constitution has always guaranteed it.
The Epstein Justice Act does not ask anyone to believe survivors on faith. It asks states to do what law enforcement exists to do: investigate credible allegations of serious crimes. Dozens of names appear in sworn depositions and victim testimony identifying specific individuals and specific criminal acts connected to a convicted child sex trafficker. Federal authorities have declined to follow those leads. Three foreign countries have started. Fifty states have not.
We do not need Congress or the next election cycle. We need one state attorney general, one governor, one state legislature willing to pick up this tool and use it. The legislation is ready. The evidence is public. The constitutional authority is settled law. The only thing missing is someone willing to go first.
Recommended reading: Basheer Ali, a fellow writer at The Existentialist Republic, just published "Steal This Executive Order: Inside the Executive Order Every Mayor in America Should Be Reading Right Now," a breakdown of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Executive Order 13, which establishes one of the most detailed and operationally specific sanctuary frameworks in the country. Every mayor, county executive, and governor should read it. Find it at basheer.substack.com/p/steal-this-executive-order.
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References
1. U.S. Department of Justice. (2026, January 30). Department of Justice publishes 3.5 million responsive pages in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act [Press release]. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-publishes-35-million-responsive-pages-compliance-epstein-files
2. Tucker, E., & Richer, A. (2026, February 5). A timeline of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and the fight to make the government’s files public. PBS News. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-timeline-of-the-jeffrey-epstein-investigation-and-the-fight-to-make-the-governments-files-public
3. Epstein Files Transparency Act, H.R. 4405, 119th Cong. (2025). https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4405/text
4. Associated Press. (2025, November 15). At Trump’s urging, Bondi says U.S. will investigate Epstein’s ties to political foes. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2025/11/15/g-s1-97958/bondi-investigate-epstein-ties-to-political-foes
5. Gamble v. United States, 587 U.S. 678 (2019). https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/17-646
6. CBS News. (2025, December 21). New Epstein files include photos, documents with redactions as DOJ releases initial trove of records. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/epstein-files-released-2025/
7. Fla. Stat. § 787.06 (2025); Fla. Stat. § 775.15 (2025). See also Donna’s Law, ch. 2020-124, Laws of Fla.
8. New York Child Victims Act, S.B. 2440, 2019-2020 Leg. Sess. (N.Y. 2019); N.Y. Crim. Proc. Law § 30.10 (providing no statute of limitations for class A felony sexual offenses including first-degree rape).
9. Sytas, A. (2026, February 3). Lithuania launches human trafficking probe related to Epstein files. Reuters; Latvia launches human trafficking investigation after Epstein file release. (2026, February 5). Reuters; Prosecutors investigating Epstein files after claims Turkish girls were trafficked. (2026, February 3). Middle East Eye.
10. Martin Act, N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law §§ 352-359 (1921, amended 1982). See also EID Climate Institute. (2025, July 25). The Martin Act: New York State’s most notorious business law. https://eidclimate.org/the-martin-act-explained/
11. The worst law in America. (2005, January 25). The Wall Street Journal [Editorial].
12. Dechert LLP. (2004, January 15). New York State’s Martin Act: A primer. Financial Services OnPoint(4). https://www.dechert.com/content/dam/dechert%20files/knowledge/onpoint/2004/1/new-york-state-s-martin-act-a-primer/FS_2004-04.pdf
13. Stogner v. California, 539 U.S. 607 (2003). http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/539/607
This is really well written and inspiring. I can’t help but wonder, every time I read one of these that are such thoughtful articles, how far and wide do you, as the author, distribute these? Honestly, if they were printable I’d mail a copy to every lead democrat in every state house, attorney’s general and governors. Might jump start something. Maybe you’re way ahead of me and already did this! All the better. I just think there is so much on this website that is valuable and I don’t want this content to fall through cracks in our disjointed information system these days. I also realize I age myself talking mail but there is value to hard copy…especially in government offices. Not so easy to ignore or delete. I have found over the years that there are times when hard copy gets a response when nothing else has worked.
"Other countries, watching this unfold, have not waited. Turkey’s Ankara Public Prosecutor opened an inquiry after the files referenced the transport of minors from Turkey. Lithuania launched a law enforcement investigation into potential human trafficking. Latvia’s president called for an investigation after Latvian names appeared in the documents. Three foreign nations read the same files we read and opened criminal investigations. Not one American state has done the same."
Yet. I think New York might just lead the way. (Fingers crossed!)