“The cover-up is worse than the crime” is almost never true — of course the crime is worse — and when the crime is rape of underage girls, I’d say it’s nearly impossible for the cover-up to be worse. But Attorney General Pam Bondi is challenging that presumption with her enraging refusal to release the names of the men who had sex with Jeffrey Epstein’s entourage of minors.

The single most disturbing fact about the Epstein case is that we know, and have known for the past two decades, that scores of prominent men — renowned, esteemed, allegedly men of character — have no problem being pedophiles.

But we still don’t know their names.

We’re now living under the fifth presidency since Epstein’s teen sex ring was busted in 2005. There have been three different prosecutions. At least a dozen girls have testified about their abuse. Epstein’s many properties have been raided and his records and papers carted away. There are flight logs, reams of witnesses, hard drives, photographs, videotapes.

By now, we should have the names of legions of perps. Some of them should have jumped off buildings already. But every time we’re about to get the names, the public is stonewalled.

To the astonishment of his voters, the stonewalling now continues under President Trump and his nitwit attorney general.

Bondi’s letter purporting to explain the cover-up is a collection of straw men, sanctimony and internal contradictions.

Her headline-making point is that the Justice Department’s “systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list.’” Our easily duped media have continued the charade by repeatedly referring to Epstein’s “long-rumored ‘client list.’”

I’ve followed this case closely since it first broke two decades ago, and I’ve never heard that rumor. Bondi acts as if we’ve been expecting a leather-bound volume with the words “CLIENT LIST” in gold lettering.

To be clear, requests for the “client list” are shorthand for “All the names of the rich and powerful men who had sexual relations with teenage girls, courtesy of Jeffrey Epstein.”

Elsewhere, Bondi’s memo boasts that the government’s “systematic review” included a “large volume of images of Epstein, images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors, and over 10,000 downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography.”

Yeah, that’s the stuff we want.

After telling us that something no one ever thought existed does not, in fact, exist, Bondi’s showstopper is a stinking pile of sanctimony in the middle of a memo protecting’s old men who had sex with teens. We will not, she snips, “permit the release of child pornography” — and you must be a sicko pervert for wanting to see it.

I admire the element of surprise. If you’d asked me, “What tone will Bondi take in refusing to release the names of child rapists?” I might have guessed, “sorrow,” “bureaucratic efficiency” or “embarrassment.” In a million years, I never would have said: “moral self-righteousness.”

I guess the best defense is a good offense, but in this case, getting on her high horse about “child pornography” blew up the rest of Bondi’s argument.

Immediately after describing the evidence as child pornography, Bondi writes: “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

Child porn is a crime, right? Having sex with kids is also a crime, and that’s pretty much the sine qua non of child porn. The “uncharged third parties” are on videotape having sex with kids — you know, the child porn that Bondi’s too horrified to release. This we know from the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, where the evidence included videotapes that had “homemade labels” with “identifying information for third parties.” (The labels were shown to the jury but withheld from the public.)

First, Bondi says she has evidence of a crime in order to brag that she will NOT release child pornography even if she’s hung by her toenails — but then she denies that she has evidence of a crime.

She blasts squid ink over the evidence, suggesting that she’s bound by the “court-ordered sealing” of a few labels in Maxwell’s case to withhold the more than 10,000 videos in the DOJ’s possession: “Only a fraction of this material would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial.”

This is nothing but legal-sounding gobbledygook intended to fool the public. Who cares what “would have been aired publicly” at trial? This isn’t a trial. It’s the supposedly transparent Trump administration.

Elsewhere, Bondi suggests, but does not say, presumably because it’s too stupid even for her, that she’s the one refusing to release the photographic evidence simply to protect the children. Not the pedophiles — whatever would give you that idea?

“One of our highest priorities,” she writes, “is combatting child exploitation,” and “it is the determination of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”

Has she heard of blurring? It’s been a standard photographic technique for more than a century — or about as long as we’ve been waiting for the names of Epstein’s pervy friends. (For short: “the client list.”) Google Maps has been blurring faces and license plates in Street View since May 2008.

This ancient art can ensure that the images are neither pornographic nor revealing of the victims’ identity, while still giving us nice clear shots of the faces of the men involved.

It’s not that hard.

For her next internal contradiction, Bondi states: “There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.”

She has videos of Epstein’s friends having sex with underage girls — what she characterizes as child pornography. Epstein went to great lengths to obtain this compromising material — installing hidden cameras throughout his properties, curating the videotapes, labeling them with the identities of both the men and girls on the tapes, and storing them in a locked safe.

Is this like Bondi’s imaginary “client list”? Unless she finds a folder marked “BLACKMAIL,” she concludes there was no blackmail?

Why is Trump blowing up his base to protect child predators? What can it mean? I don’t believe Trump had sex with teen girls (or, for that matter, Stormy Daniels or that woman at Bergdorf Goodman), but absent the transparency he promised voters, people are going to come up with wild theories, and some of them may be true.

Firing Bondi isn’t going to get Trump out of this. No one cares if it’s Bondi, Kash Patel, Brooke Rollins (when she’s not pushing a mass amnesty) or Trump himself who’s stonewalling us this time. Rage at the Epstein cover-up will not end until we have the names and compromising photos. A lot of photos.

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