Two people have been convicted for sex crimes in the Epstein saga — Jeffrey Epstein and his onetime girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. Will they be the only two to see the inside of a prison cell?

Epstein, of course, died in his cell in 2019, while Maxwell is serving her 20-year sentence for helping Epstein recruit, groom, and abuse girls as young as 14. She appeared before the House Oversight Committee yesterday, where she repeatedly invoked “my Fifth Amendment right to silence” and refused to answer any questions until she receives clemency from President Donald Trump.

That was “expected,” but “very disappointing,” said Chairman James Comer.

The only thing the committee really heard was a statement from Maxwell’s attorney, David Markus. “If this committee and the American public truly want to hear the unfiltered truth about what happened, there is a straightforward path. Ms. Maxwell is prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President [Donald] Trump,” Markus said. “Only she can provide the complete account. Some may not like what they hear, but the truth matters. For example, both President Trump and President Clinton are innocent of any wrongdoing. Ms. Maxwell alone can explain why, and the public is entitled to that explanation.”

One wonders if Bill and Hillary Clinton will play the same card when they finally appear for testimony later this month.

Last November, Congress passed and Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which “requires the Department of Justice (DOJ) to publish (in a searchable and downloadable format) all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in DOJ’s possession that relate to the investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein.” The DOJ had 30 days to do so.

In short, both Republicans and Democrats hoped to hurt the other party with whatever allegations came to light from those files.

“I think that the Department of Justice has been in a cover-up mode for many months and has been trying to sweep the entire thing under the rug,” complained Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. “There’s no way you run a billion-dollar international child sex trafficking ring with just two people committing crimes.”

That’s probably the position of most people who’ve paid any attention at all to this long-running saga. However, Epstein made sure there were many (usually green) reasons to associate with him, none of which involved women or girls.

Even the Clintons might be in that boat. Take, for example, this tidbit from The New York Times: “Ms. Maxwell played a substantial role in supporting the creation of the Clinton Global Initiative, one of Mr. Clinton’s signature post-White House efforts.”

Yet Democrats’ real goal is to make much of the fact that Donald Trump shows up fairly frequently in the Epstein files, including with unsubstantiated allegations against him personally. My personal opinion is that if Democrats had even a whiff of something they could use against Trump, they would have used it a long time ago.

Democrats spent the last decade creating the Russia collusion hoax, impeaching Trump twice, and then indicting him on 91 felony counts, including, I think, for eating a ham sandwich. You mean to tell me they didn’t think about using his connection with Epstein?

“It is inconceivable,” writes former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, “that the Epstein prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (SDNY), led by Maureen Comey, daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, would have buried a career-making case against Trump or any other prominent person.”

And if Epstein or Maxwell had anything on Trump, they surely would have used that to get out of jail well before now.

It’s almost humorous that one of the reasons Trump is in the files is his 2006 conversation with an investigating police chief about Epstein’s crimes and to notify authorities that he had thrown Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago.

I’m not going to pretend that Trump is innocent when everyone knows he was a habitual philanderer. But neither do I believe he was part of any Epstein sex trafficking.

In fact, it’s still a question whether anyone but Epstein and Maxwell really is guilty of crimes against girls.

“The FBI pored over Jeffrey Epstein’s bank records and emails. It searched his homes. It spent years interviewing his victims and examining his connections to some of the world’s most influential people,” reports the Associated Press. “But while investigators collected ample proof that Epstein sexually abused underage girls, they found scant evidence the well-connected financier led a sex trafficking ring serving powerful men.”

Here’s the caveat big enough to drive a semi truck through: You have to believe the FBI and the AP. Both have so thoroughly destroyed their own reputations that it’s totally understandable when regular Americans look at all this and just know in their bones that there’s something we’re not being told.

Still, think of the high-profile mass murderers who worked alone and without committing other crimes. The simplest explanation — Occam’s razor — is that Epstein and Maxwell committed the crimes while associating with numerous powerful people in legal ways.

I really don’t know if that’s all that happened, and neither do the internet sleuths who are making bank by stirring the pot. Do I want justice for the myriad women who suffered abuse? Absolutely. Does smearing anyone and everyone whose name shows up in the Epstein files accomplish that? Hardly. Does exposing the victims (sometimes literally) do that? Not even close.

The bottom line here is that Epstein and Maxwell were convicted of heinous crimes. Other people may be guilty as well, but it may be virtually impossible to convict them in a court of law. Allegations are not evidence, and lurid behavior perpetrated decades ago is often hard to prove.

It’s especially hard to believe that a Justice Department controlled by both parties at a time of intense political lawfare failed to find anything worth prosecuting. As Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey put it, “The DoJ under two presidents spent thousands of man-hours — maybe tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands — building a massive trove of testimony and evidence, and they didn’t do that to shrug off Epstein or protect his super-rich pals.”

That’s not a satisfying way to close any case, but especially one that could involve some of the nation’s most powerful people.

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