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Notes -
People will not be punished for imaginary crimes.
First of all, people are punished for imaginary crimes all the frickin time. Starting with the sitting president, who has been punished (or there was an attempt to punish him) for imaginary crimes at least half-dozen times, maybe more. And downstream from that, down to declaring parents who want to know not even what happens in the upper regions of the system, but in their own local school - domestic terrorists, and making a task force to find some imaginary crimes they can be prosecuted for. This is part of the deal too - while the patricians virtually never get prosecuted for anything - unless they cross another, more important, patrician - the plebeians are getting prosecuted left and right for utter bullshit.
But second of all, the crimes of Epstein are not "imaginary". He was known as a convicted criminal since 2008, and the exact nature of his conviction was also known since then. Moreover, the materials of his and Maxwell criminal cases strongly suggest that his operation was not uniquely tailored to satisfy one single person, but was wider. And also common sense suggests that at least some people who associated with known criminal who did not exactly hide his proclivities used his criminal services. One can not claim, obviously, just having any business with Epstein means they were part of the criminal business too, but at least it is plausible that there is more than one person that consumed those services. And there are witnesses that claim they know for a fact such persons exist.
And if it is plausible, the inferior people would like the people who claim they are there to protect them (or at least The Law), and given enormous powers to do so, will actually do at least a proper investigation on the matter. We know they can do that - this happens in drug cases, this happens in terrorist cases, this happened on Jan 6 where the FBI deployed immense resources to find every last grandma in Alabama who were in the vicinity of the Capitol on that day, and put her into jail. They have the powers. They are not using them. The inferior people are wondering - why? What is happening here? You answer is "you are just a bunch of dumb idiots and nobody is going to explain you anything because you are dumb". This answer is not very satisfactory.
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'Elites' are more likely to be punished for imaginary crimes (like fucking 16 and 17-year-olds) than real ones.
To a point, they have qualified/sovereign immunity from prosecution when they commit the real crimes, that's why you have to get them hard on the public morals stuff.
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