18 November—On this day in 1978, Jim Jones conned 918 overly receptive followers in his Peoples Temple cult into committing suicide in Guyana by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid. It was more likely cheaper Flavor Aid. Makes you wonder. Jones shot himself in the head, by the way.

To get the most important topic of the biennium out of the way, then, prurient interest in the justice department’s allegedly voluminous Jeffrey Epstein files may or may not be sated when—if—they make it to the public without the benefit of redaction to protect the definitely innocent as well as the possibly guilty.

So what’s the big deal? Sleazy Epstein must have had relationships, communications, dealings, contacts—one hesitates to say intercourse in the circumstance, although that’s precisely what the word means—with people who didn’t know or even suspect that he had a lucrative sex-trafficking sideline to whatever he did to keep up appearances.

You’d figure that oversexed reprobates like Willy Clinton and Donald Trump had at least an inkling of Epstein’s whore-mongering sideline, even though both debauchees insist they never visited Little Saint James, Epstein’s 70-plus-acre paradise in the U.S. Virgin Islands. So far there’s nothing to prove otherwise.

Alan Dershowitz must have known all the salacious Epstein details because he was one of the sleazebag’s lawyers. And we read that he visited Little Saint James—but only for a single day in 2009, he claims, shortly after Epstein had purchased the island and the knocking shop was still under construction. And Dershowitz claims his wife and daughter were with him. Dershowitz maintains, moreover, that no “young people” were on the tight little island at the time. Except his daughter, of course, who while young probably wasn’t jail-bait.

For the record, Epstein had bought his island in 1998 and by 2008 his little paradise is said to have had 70 people working there, all bound by Epstein’s official secrets act. Not that it matters, but Epstein bought neighboring Great Saint James in 2016. Also for the record, Dershowitz claims that his relationship with Epstein was “primarily academic and professional.” Dershowitz was a law professor, after all.

The late Virginia Giuffre alleged that she had been forced to have sex with Alan Dershowitz on Little Saint James and elsewhere. Dershowitz evidently was able to prove otherwise—and that he’d never even met her. So her lawsuit and his counter-suit were dropped in 2022 without any payment involved. One wonders about the accuracy as well as the veracity of other of Virginia Giuffre’s allegations. And one also wonders if the Man Formerly Known as Prince Andrew knew that Guiffre was jail-bait when he may have been “with” her.

Back to the DOJ’s Epstein files, there’s something more to Donald Trump’s waxing hot and cold and hot again about their release than his celebrated mental instability. But in all events, he could have ordered his non-weaponized DOJ to release the succulent files any time he bloody well pleased, Congress be damned. And he could very well change his mind again . . .