The context you need, when you need it

When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters — and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. But we can’t do it on our own.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

Me Too revealed a lot of villains. Why is Epstein the one we still care about?

How the Epstein story became an American parable.

As part of its ongoing release of the Epstein files, the Department of Justice has released three FBI memos relating to accusations of sexual assault against President Donald Trump. The news came days after Bill and Hillary Clinton were brought before the House Oversight Committee to testify about Bill’s connection to notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The Epstein story first caught fire at the height of the Me Too movement

How Clinton and Trump fit into the Epstein story

Eight years of conspiracy theories about Epstein, Clinton, and Trump

All of this was perhaps only a matter of time. The right has long been as obsessed with how Clinton fits into the Epstein story as the left has been with the question of how Trump fits into it.

Both Trump and Clinton feature in the Epstein files. They appear in photos, grinning and tanned next to a smirking Epstein; they appear in magazines, giving admiring quotes about him. The persistent presence of both presidents in the Epstein story is part of what has given it such staying power.

Epstein’s story first became inescapable because of the Me Too movement. Yet while the Epstein story still has avid followers, the same cannot be said for the rest of the stories that dominated headlines in 2017 at the height of Me Too. Instead, we are in the midst of a full Me Too backlash.

The mounting, undeniable Me Too backlash

Many of the gains the movement ostensibly brought have been either overturned or used as justification for an anti-feminist “correction.” Trump won his reelection bid in 2024 even after being found civilly liable for sexual assault; after his victory, the gloating phrase “Your body, my choice” trended on social media. High-profile men accused of sexual misconduct are being greeted with not just indifference but outright sympathy. In a 2025 poll run by The 19th, more than half of the men surveyed said that women should return to “traditional” gender roles like child-rearing and housewifery.

Yet Epstein remains a bipartisan issue, in large part because both sides can use it as evidence for a bigger narrative. It’s these metanarratives that explain why the Epstein story lingers when so few other Me Too stories have — and why Me Too had as much impact as it did in 2017.

The Epstein story first caught fire at the height of the Me Too movement

In 2018, the Me Too movement made Jeffrey Epstein — already a convicted sex offender, but little known among the general public — into a monster. Usually, stories about relatively unknown men doing terrible things to women are met with a muted response from the public, but that year, things were different.

Bombshell reporting that year from the Miami Herald revealed that as early as 2006, law enforcement had compiled mountains of evidence suggesting that Epstein had sexually abused dozens of underage girls. But wealthy, well-connected Epstein worked out a sweetheart deal with prosecutors that limited his sentencing to just 13 months in the county jail, pleading guilty to nothing more than two prostitution charges. He was also allowed to commute to work from jail while he was serving out his sentence, a privilege he allegedly used to sexually abuse more women.

The 2018 Epstein story met an audience primed to be angry at the abuses of monstrous men, and they really did get angry.

Culture........

© Vox