The sequence of events reads like a high-society farce staged in the hall of justice: thousands of investigative records, including more than 33,000 pages and bodycam footage from the Epstein and Maxwell saga, dumped into the public gaze by a Republican-led House committee that pretends to champion transparency while nudging the public to applaud their access. The intention was clearly to outmaneuver a bipartisan push to lock in full disclosure, or at least to force the release of non-classified materials with the faces of victims spared from the glare of cameras and the parties’ political theatrics. One would imagine that the speaker’s insistence on “necessary and protective” measures would be the final word on such matters, yet the instrument remains the same: press conferences, grandstanding, and a chorus of voices proclaiming how they are finally cleansing the Augean stables, even as the stables themselves seem to have multiplied.

Subsequent chapters in this melodrama only sharpen the sense that the public is watching a process designed to skate away from accountability. The DOJ, in a later act, publishes Maxwell-related protocols; the political back-and-forth continues with promises of unparalleled transparency, followed by the admission that there is no master list of Epstein clients and no intention to release further files. The Republicans roar in protest, as if the heavens would open and pour forth the literal names of the powerful who danced in the shadows. Courts bar the release of grand-jury materials, while a New York judge notes that the government holds hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—of pages and suggests that releasing the entire trove might be more sensible. By mid-August, officials concede that the information tally dwarfs what has ever seen the light of day, and the public is left to wonder whether the truth is a moving target, or merely an ever-receding horizon designed to protect the comfortable from discomfort.

I suppose one could admire the gilded stubbornness of it all. Here we have a system that pretends to be a beacon of liberty, yet clings to a procedural cathedral in which the doors open only so wide and only for those who can afford the right seat in the pew. The theater of “transparency” is charming when it serves the aristocracy’s appetite for optics—redacted faces, partial lists, selective disclosures—yet utterly transparent when it comes to sparing reputations and preserving the comfortable status quo. The notion that releasing “non-classified” material with redactions will satisfy the public is the kind of pious sophistry that keeps politicians from having to confront the consequences of their own choices. And let us not pretend the victims’ privacy is a sacred shield in a district attorney’s game of constitutional hide-and-seek; more often, it is a handy excuse to avoid naming names that would stain the powerful.

From my vantage, the whole affair smacks of a grand performance put on for those who crave headlines more than truth. The absence of a master list of Epstein clients is less a privacy concern than a confession of systemic aversion to rendering judgment on those who pull the levers of influence. The courts’ reluctance to unleash grand-jury materials is less about legal caution and more about preserving a fabric of untouchability around certain circles. And the admission that the government harbors far more information than it releases—well, that is not accountability; that is a confession that power will tolerate only the disclosures that do not threaten its order.

What, precisely, are these exercises in transparency for if they do not illuminate the reaches of privilege? If the aim is to reassure the public that “everything is under control,” one might point out that control has nothing to do with the width of a subpoena, the depth of a redaction, or the number of press conferences held to assure us that the system is doing its job. Real accountability would mean naming names with the courage to withstand the consequences, not staging a public ritual where the truth is teased out in increments, like a duchess allowing a peasant to glimpse a fragment of lace before the curtain falls.

And so I gaze upon this ballet of documents as a person of means and breeding would: with a blend of polite indulgence and undeniable contempt for the petty squabbles of men who mistake power for virtue. If you tell me that transparency is the essence of justice, I expect more than a curated gallery of pages that never quite reach the light. I expect the courage to demolish the scaffolding that guards the grand houses of influence, to insist on a full and unredacted reckoning, and to treat the victims not as cards in a bargaining game but as witnesses whose testimony deserves the clearest possible presentation. Until then, the ruling class can continue to cloak itself in words like “protection” and “privacy” while the rest of us sort through a labyrinth of pages that reveal almost nothing and reveal it only when a jury of the public will not indict the truth for fear of offending one’s favorite narrative.

The lesson, as ever, is that the symbols of openness are not itself openness; they are a performance designed to soothe a crowd while preserving the architecture that makes the spectacle possible. If democracy is serious about justice, it must stop treating disclosures as tokens to be spent for appearances and begin treating them as tools for accountability—tools that cut through the veneer of rituals and reveal the machinery behind them. Until that pivot occurs, this is not transparency; it is a carefully choreographed conversion of scandal into policy, a very public gloss on a private privilege, and a reminder that, for some, truth remains a possession to be guarded rather than a burden to bear.