[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]

When a close associate of President Bill Clinton was arrested and then given the cushiest prison sentence imaginable, complete with open cell doors and a work release program that allowed a convicted sex offender to work from his beachfront home, the media didn’t care.

When Democrat officials in three different states, New York, New Mexico and Florida, colluded to keep Jeffrey Epstein off the sex offender registries, not a single party member said a word.

The first time the Democrats suddenly decided they cared about Jeffrey Epstein was when a former federal prosecutor who had dealt with his case, Alex Acosta, was nominated for a position by the Trump administration. That was when the Epstein story first became news.

And then, having achieved its dubious goal, Epstein died and the story was buried again.

Finally, when Trump administration officials announced that there were no further documents to show about the case, the Democrats suddenly decided that they want to hold hearings on a case from the first decade of the millennium, and the media belatedly decided to investigate it.

But the Democrats didn’t actually want an investigation until they knew they were in the clear

There were years and years in which the Democrats could have decided to demand documents related to the Epstein case. Instead they waited until they received unintentional assurances from the Trump administration that the documents didn’t exist to start demanding them.

That’s not how innocent people act. It’s how criminals who have just learned there’s no evidence against them begin posturing and virtue signaling because they know they’re now untouchable. But what’s almost as damning is the timetable of their original interest in Epstein.

The Democrats and their media waited and waited until after the election that ended Hillary Clinton’s political career to use Epstein to go after Trump. Had Hillary Clinton won and had the Clinton machine remained a force in Democrat politics, Epstein would have been unmentionable. Only because the Clintons lost, did the Democrats pull the trigger on him.

Both then and now, the Democrats and their media waited until they were in the clear from their Epstein links to suddenly develop a belated interest in why one of their wealthy career sex offender donors had been allowed to waltz away from charges in Democratic Party areas.

Now they suddenly want answers. But those are answers to all the wrong questions.

The question is why was Epstein allowed to get away with his crimes in 2008 and onward until the earliest days of the Trump administration. And the answer obviously isn’t Trump who was a real estate tycoon and would not be in the government until the last days of Epstein’s career .

Here are the real questions that none of the Democrats or their media outlets suddenly interested once again in Trump want to ask or answer. And they’re the ones that matter.

Why did a Democrat prosecutor in Florida who had gone after Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter over minor matters give Epstein a pass for his horrifying crimes against young girls? Why did another Democrat prosecutor in Manhattan, who would spend the latter part of his career going after Trump on utterly invented charges, decide to inappropriately lower Epstein’s sex offender status? Why did New Mexico, a state run by a former Clinton administration cabinet member, and a future potential Obama VP nominee, take Epstein off the sex offender registry?

Those are obviously not the questions that House Dems want to hold hearings on or that the media wants to investigate. What they want to do is talk about Trump who was not a prosecutor or any kind of government official rather than any of the Democrats who actually were.

The sudden outburst of journalism delves into Trump’s very casual relationship with Epstein around the same time as he was building a relationship with Hillary Clinton and donating to the Clinton Foundation, which Epstein claimed to have co-founded, for his business interests. The media is investigating Trump’s relationship with Epstein, rather than the relationship between Epstein and the Clintons, which is impossible to view as anything except as another cover-up.

Trump ended his relationship with Epstein a decade before Democrat megadonors like Bill Gates, who poured $50 million into electing Kamala Harris, and the banks, billionaires and Democrat officials whom he had turned into his own private network, were still tied to him.

Any association between Trump and Epstein ended over twenty years ago. But the same media that still refuses to investigate why Democrat officials across three different states with ties to the Clinton political machine protected a sex predator want to do a deep dive on Trump.

None of this has anything to do with bringing the perpetrators to justice. But it never did.

The time to bring Epstein’s protectors to justice would have been 15 years ago. Instead the same political machine trying to weaponize Epstein (now that they know the documents are gone) covered for him and wouldn’t even mention his name for fear of the Clintons.

Now they still won’t mention the Clintons. Instead, the Democrats and their media want us to pretend that Jeffrey Epstein was protected from prosecutors across three states by a real estate tycoon who had broken any association with Epstein four years before his original court case.

That’s not just a lie. It’s an extension of the cover-up. Instead of chasing phantom client lists and materials that were long since deleted by the same FBI that wiped Hillary’s hard drives, time would be better spent digging into any remaining communications between Democrat prosecutors in Florida, New York and New Mexico and members of their political class.

The clock isn’t going to turn back on Epstein’s crimes, but the surest way to the network behind them is by exposing the Democrats who colluded around the country to protect him from justice.