As many of us try to find some cozy solace with our families over the holidays, the Department of Justice has begun releasing the Epstein files — as required by a law that took an open revolt by the MAGA base to enact.

It is doing so in what appears to be the most haphazard, obfuscatory and confusing manner possible. As a result, we are no closer to the truth about how Jeffrey Epstein ran his sex-trafficking ring, dispensed favors and kept some of the most powerful men on the planet in his orbit.

We do know something about how that last part worked: He facilitated their access to young women. Some of this was plainly illegal — sex trafficking and rape. Much of the rest existed in a gray zone of exploitation and abuse. In any case, we remain no closer to justice for the women who were the victims of this vast scheme.

This is not how the release of the Epstein files was supposed to go. The fight was to get them released, and then, finally, the truth would be revealed.

Instead, social media is flooded with documents — some authentic, many not — and context-free photographs of celebrities. The materials appear selectively released by the Department of Justice, heavily redacted, revealing little while stirring up plenty. (In reference to some documents, the department has said it “simply reproduced” redacted content.) The result is the worst possible outcome: an even more hyperpartisan blame game that drifts far from justice for the victims.

And what of the powerful men Epstein surrounded himself with — the ones who seemed to protect him as much as he indulged them? Why were so many possible conspirators’ names shielded? Are they still being protected?

Many of these images of 1990s life transported me back to my genteel but feral youth on the Upper East Side. The city was still grimy. Donald Trump was a tabloid peacock forever teetering on bankruptcy. The world that thought itself cosmopolitan was ruled by problematic men, indulged without much compunction.

My feminist mother loved Bill Clinton. He appears frequently in these releases, as if to remind us how skeevy that former president always was — and perhaps to distract from how skeevy the current one is.

One especially troubling photo shows Mr. Clinton with his arm wrapped around a young girl or woman — we don’t know her age — practically sitting on his lap. Her face is hidden behind a black redaction box. I find myself wondering what she has lived through.

I have tangentially known the Epstein associate Woody Allen my entire life. Allen made movies like Manhattan about teenage girls — a 17-year-old Dalton student, specifically — who fell in love with much older men. I once thought of myself, a private-school kid with a drug problem, as one of those girls.

Allen appears in many of the newly released Epstein photos — on Epstein’s plane, on a movie set. As Ginia Bellafante noted in The New York Times, “By his own account, Allen began going to the Epstein house in 2010, two years after Mr. Epstein had been sentenced for soliciting sex from teenage girls.”

It turns out I was the one who didn’t get it. A lot of us didn’t. We are playing catch-up now.

Part of the reason I didn’t get it is that I was insulated from the vulnerabilities Epstein exploited. I didn’t need money for sneakers or a job as a masseuse. I had access to people who would believe me, and I was — and am — loud. Those things likely protected me from the fate of Epstein’s many victims.

On Nov. 18, 2025, I traveled to Washington, D.C., to watch a group of now middle-aged women recount what Epstein and his friends did to them when they were young and vulnerable. One of them, Maria Farmer, had been begging the government for an investigation since 1996. She accused Epstein of stealing nude images of her siblings — an allegation documented in an FBI report and then apparently ignored. Her account was among the few genuinely illuminating revelations in the Justice Department’s document dump.

Outside, survivors held photos of themselves from the time of their abuse. The women holding those photos looked centuries older than the girls staring back.

One survivor, Haley Robson, addressed the absent president directly, expressing gratitude for his pledge while voicing skepticism about the agenda behind the releases. It was clear these women were never going to get the justice they wanted.

And so it has gone. The files were released in a way that maximizes outrage, feeds conspiracy and minimizes illumination. At least 16 files briefly disappeared from the Justice Department website before being reposted, including a photo of Trump and Epstein.

Failing Epstein’s victims has been a bipartisan, multi-administration project — Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden, alongside the FBI and countless others. The photos show a world of private planes and powerful men, sports cars and children hidden behind black boxes.

The images are revolting and sad. Epstein’s leathery tan, his smile; a note explaining that someone can’t visit because of “soccer”; the hands of a girl sitting on his lap. I stare at those hands and try to guess her age.

Epstein is dead. But what of the other men? And what of the children behind the boxes — now grown, some gone? And what of the next generation caught in the webs of other powerful men? Will they ever be safe?

Molly Jong-Fast is the host of the 'Fast Politics' podcast and the author of 'How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir'

The New York Times