Here we see, once again, the grotesque charade of state "investigation," a circus dressed up as justice but amounting to nothing more than political theater and the protection of entrenched power. The Epstein saga—rife with child abuse, elite malfeasance, and layers upon layers of state cover-up—is a tragic and predictable consequence of a society that outsources morality and justice to coercive bureaucratic monopolies. The state shields its own, buries evidence, and orchestrates kabuki hearings closed to the people it claims to "serve." Hillary and Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, FBI directors, attorneys general—notice that every individual with proximity to this scandal is a creature of state power, a participant in the very system that allowed Epstein to operate with impunity for decades.

Let's be clear: no central authority monopolizing law enforcement or investigation can ever be trusted to hold itself accountable. As Hayek warned, concentration of power inevitably breeds corruption, a self-perpetuating elite immune to the supposed rules they enforce on everyone else. We see this now with secret hearings and selective document releases, manipulated by whichever faction of the political oligarchy happens to be nominally “in control.” The fact that even minimal transparency is an uphill battle—subject to endless court delays and bureaucratic vetoes—is proof that government is not a solution to wrongs, but the enabling architect.

Rand would look at this spectacle and see precisely the looters and moochers who weaponize morality while hiding from its demands. Epstein thrived not despite the state but because of its power to grant immunity, protect the connected, and conceal the full extent of the rot. An actually free, competitive society—where justice is not a government monopoly but a pluralistic marketplace of arbitration and exposure—would never have enabled him to victimize dozens of minors without rapid and visible consequences. The monopoly on force, exercised by an unaccountable government, is what empowers predators in the first place.

Nozick’s critique of “protective associations” forcibly preventing competition for justice is validated here: the state’s investigative apparatus is just another tool for the politically powerful to secure their own impunity. No amount of Congressional subpoenas or attorney general posturing will change that—not when the entire charade is managed and stage-managed by those who created and benefited from the system in the first place.

True accountability, transparency, and justice in the Epstein case—or any case—will never come from empowering the very monopolists who enabled, protected, and now “investigate” their own. The only way forward is wholesale rejection of the state as arbiter of right and wrong: let the files loose, abolish official secrets, decentralize investigation, unleash competitive private inquiry, and strip the state of every inch of power it uses to shelter its own. Anyone hoping for “justice” from a closed Congressional hearing or a court-ordered document dump is still trapped in the statist illusion. Real justice will come only when the machinery of state privilege is dismantled and accountability is wrenched out of the grasp of bureaucrats and handed back to individuals and voluntary associations.