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Right. But I'm pointing out that if you were approached by Epstein and he said "hey that girl you banged was actually 15/16. We can keep it under wraps but you'll have to do some favors going forward", aren't you a LITTLE morally culpable for not taking the hit and blowing the whistle? Yes, you acted with reasonable propriety, you were lied to, you weren't intentionally doing the illegal thing, but now you're buying into it.
It beggars belief that nobody attending the parties came into knowledge that he was bringing around underage girls. Its uncertain how many sought out the parties because there were underage girls there, but the claims of "oh yeah, everybody heard the rumor that this was going on" only come out once the truth is already known.
Sure would be nice for someone to proffer these facts before they become public knowledge.
No. And while 'buying into it' implies/generally comes at a cost to the public at large, this is the same public perpetrating the hysterics around an action that isn't immoral (hence the need for the hysterics).
So it's on the same moral level as dodging any other tax is. No more, no less. [Which is why you want harsh consequences for elite misbehavior in this way: it's dodging the tax every other member of the public has to pay to its hysterical members.]
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I don't know how long did the scheme last, but this quote from the Don himself was from 2002:
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