Why is Diddy on trial - but Epstein’s friends aren’t?
Inside the media’s quiet complicity in protecting white male power, from slavery to today.
This piece probably won’t even make it past the algorithm.
I’ve watched the little momentum I had fall off a cliff these past few days.
I thought maybe it was just timing. Maybe it was the headline.
But nah.
Make no mistake about it fam.
It was the voice. The raw Black voice. The voice of defiance.
Silly me I thought code-switching was for the workplace, not for a platform made for writers.
I almost shelved this. Figured the only person who’d ever read it was my editor.
But I read my subscribers’ posts. You know this.
And three of y’all pulled me back from the edge:
Dr. LaTaSha Levy reminding us that white supremacy isn’t just evil—it’s apocalyptic.
Scott’s Substack , laying bare how Medicaid cuts are dressed up as policy but function like a purge.
And All This Hustle, For What? , showing how burnout doesn’t show up with a warning—just silence and shutdown.
Y’all reminded me:
You don’t write because it’ll trend.
You write because someone has to say this shit out loud
The Disappearing Names
Diddy’s name trended every week even after the trial.
Cassie. Sex trafficking. “Freak-offs.” Private jets full of shame.
The timeline eats it up, drags him through the algorithmic mud, and spits him out again by Monday.
Meanwhile, Jeffrey Epstein’s client list?
We don’t know it.
We’ve never seen it.
And the press talks about it like it’s the stuff of fan fiction.
That silence is the story.
Because if you had listened closely during the trial, the question wasn’t “Was Diddy guilty?”
The real question that needs to be asked is:
Why is he the one being sacrificed? And why are the men who flew on Epstein’s plane, slept in his houses, watched his tapes nowhere to be found?
This country has never struggled to throw Black men under the prison bus.
But when the predator wears a Harvard ring, has a hedge fund, or shook hands with a President, suddenly the headlines get… delicate.
The urgency evaporates.
The story “develops” offscreen.
You notice how no one says “Where’s the Epstein footage?”
But we’ve seen everything R. Kelly ever recorded.
Every meme. Every transcript. Every docuseries.
Meanwhile, Epstein had thousands of hours of videos allegedly involving teenage girls and all we got was a mugshot and a meme about him not killing himself.
We know this pattern.
It’s not just erasure, it’s protection.
It’s what happens when white male power is the thing at risk.
So let’s stop pretending this is about what Diddy did.
This is about who America still won’t hold accountable.
Because if they really released the Epstein Files—America wouldn’t survive what’s on them.
The Epstein Files Were Supposed to Be the Bombshell
In 2024, Trump promised to “release all the Epstein files.”
It was classic MAGA theater—pitchforks and populism. He framed it like a crusade against liberal elites, Hollywood creeps, and “the Clinton crowd.”
And his base bought that shit.
Hook, line, and conspiracy.
But here in 2025, with Trump back in power?
The files are still locked up.
And the only thing the administration’s released… is the pressure valve.
Attorney General Pam Bondi stepped up last week with a sunny smile and a bullshit briefing:
No client list.
No conspiracies.
No evidence anyone else needs to be prosecuted.
Move along.
Never mind the thousand hours of seized footage.
Never mind the black books, the burner phones, the CDs labeled “girl pics nude book 4.”
They reviewed it all and somehow found nothing worth sharing with the public.
No list. No leaks. Just… closure.
And when House Democrats tried to force transparency through legislation?
The GOP blocked it.
MAGA’s own anti-trafficking warriors fell silent overnight.
Dan Bongino, Trump’s own FBI deputy and former Epstein files hawk, reportedly threatened to resign over the internal cover-up.
That’s how real this got.
Shouting matches. Secret meetings.
And when the smoke cleared, Trump sided with Bondi. The files stayed sealed.
Even Elon Musk who’s usually too busy cosplaying Tony Stark to care, suggested Trump might be hiding something to protect himself.
And for once, folks didn’t call it a reach.
So what happened to all that righteous fire?
What happened to exposing “the global pedo elite”?
What happened to the men in the videos?
Here’s the truth:
The moment the Epstein Files stopped being useful as a weapon against liberal enemies, they became a threat to everyone in power.
And the Trump administration did what every administration has done when that threat gets too close:
They buried it.
What’s Actually Happening Now – Democratic Showtime
Soon as Trump flinched on Epstein, Democrats smelled blood.
No not justice.
Blood.
They didn’t demand the names.
They didn’t demand the footage.
They didn’t name a single executive, donor, or politician who might’ve walked those mansion halls.
What they did do was seize the PR opportunity.
Ro Khanna dropped an amendment to force the release of Epstein’s full evidence inventory.
Chuck Schumer gave his “transparency” speech.
And House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries went full press tour, hitting cable news with that well-rehearsed line: “The American people deserve the truth.”
And yes maybe they do Hakeem.
But that ain’t what this is.
This isn’t moral high ground.
It’s strategic positioning.
Because if this was really about the truth?
Democrats would’ve been demanding these names before Trump reversed course.
They would’ve brought up the fact that one of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Giuffre, linked her abuse to both Republicans and Democrats.
They would’ve reckoned with the fact that Bill Clinton flew on that damn plane more than two dozen times.
But nah.
Instead, they’re sending out super PACs to troll GOP members for flip-flopping on Epstein transparency.
Launching ad campaigns.
Trying to peel off MAGA voters who feel betrayed.
Because this isn’t about survivors.
This is about momentum.
Click rates. Optics. Ballot boxes.
The Epstein Files are being used like a campaign flyer.
And the silence around the actual men in those tapes?
Still intact.
Still bipartisan.
The Media’s Long History of Protecting Power
We know what they do to a Black man accused of sexual violence.
They break the news with a siren, not a whisper.
When R. Kelly was finally brought down, it was with a full media blitz:
Surviving R. Kelly.
Multiple Netflix docs.
Lifetime specials.
Gail King interviews.
A whole cinematic universe of exposure.
And that was after decades of whispers.
Compare that to Epstein.
Jeffrey Epstein was trafficking underage girls across state lines, into mansions, onto planes, into the arms of men with real power—judges, scientists, diplomats.
And when ABC News had the story back in 2015?
They killed it.
Let’s be clear:
Virginia Giuffre named Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton on tape.
ABC’s Amy Robach confirmed they had photos, interviews, and corroboration.
But the network shelved it.
Why?
Because “the Palace found out.”
Because they didn’t want to lose access to Will and Kate.
Because some executive decided exposing a sex trafficking ring was less valuable than a royal interview.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory.
The tape of Robach venting was leaked. You can hear the disbelief in her voice.
Same thing with NBC and Ronan Farrow.
He brought them the Weinstein story to include victims, evidence, receipts.
They buried it.
He had to take it to The New Yorker to get it out.
You see the pattern?
When the accused is a Black man we get every detail, every lurid headline, every whisper turned into a sledgehammer.
When the accused is a white man with institutional power?
We get euphemisms.
“Complicated legacy.”
“Disgraced financier.”
“Controversial figure.”
When it’s Cosby, we get years of coverage and fucking think pieces.
This isn’t accidental.
It’s structural.
The press doesn’t just report on power.
It preserves it.
When Rape Was Legal—And Silence Was Mandatory
Before the Epstein Files were hidden, before the media ran interference, before courtrooms started calling rape “alleged misconduct”…
there was slavery.
And under slavery, rape wasn’t misconduct. It wasn’t scandalous. It was as legal as baseball and apple pie.
That’s not an exaggeration.
As sociologist Dr. Rachel Feinstein lays out in her essential book, When Rape Was Legal: The Untold History of Sexual Violence During Slavery, every Southern state
upheld laws that rendered Black women unrapeable. If a white man forced himself on an enslaved Black woman, the law simply did not recognize it as a crime.
“Because enslaved Black women had no legal protection,” Feinstein writes, “white men could violate them sexually with impunity—and this sexual violence became a normalized method of reinforcing white male dominance.”
It wasn’t just a personal indulgence.
It was economic policy.
Enslavers profited from rape.
The more children a Black woman had, the more bodies they could sell.
“Women were bred like cattle,” survivors later recalled.
If a woman refused the master’s son? She’d be whipped. Sold off. Or worse, bred by force.
And this wasn’t some isolated horror story—it was the culture.
It was the “gentlemanly” thing to do.
Feinstein documents how white men turned rape into ritual.
Some fathers bought teenage Black girls as “gifts” for their sons—training them to perform white masculinity through sexual violence.
One mother, writing proudly in 1844, said she bought three “attractive mulatto girls” and placed them in a house for her son’s use, “to make Charley steady.”
This was generational sin, passed down like heirlooms.
And white women?
They weren’t innocent bystanders.
Feinstein shows how they often protected their husbands’ and sons’ reputations by blaming Black women for their own abuse.
Harriet Jacobs, the first Black woman to write a fugitive slave narrative, begged her master’s wife for protection only to be met with jealousy and rage. Not at the abuser. At her.
That dynamic hasn’t disappeared.
And still, Black women resisted.
One anonymous woman, interviewed in the 1930s, told how she was whipped nearly to death for refusing her young master’s sexual advances.
Afterward, she told him:
“You didn’t strip me. You stripped your mama and your sister. God made us all the same.”
Read that again.
That’s not just resistance.
That’s a psychological counter-frame…a spiritual, psychological rebellion against centuries of white violence.
Feinstein highlights dozens of stories like that, showing how Black women never stopped asserting their right to dignity, even when the law, the whip, and the Bible said otherwise.
So when we talk about Epstein, and the names being protected, and the silence in the press…
understand this:
Silence has always been the law.
It just used to wear chains.
Now it wears credentials.
Two Courts—One for Diddy, One for the Discreet
Sean “Diddy” Combs was tried in public before his trial even began.
Cassie’s lawsuit hit the internet like a bomb alleging years of coercion, trafficking, assault.
Within 24 hours, Diddy settled.
Then came the federal charges.
Then the raids.
Then the headlines.
We’ve seen the footage.
The tweets.
The TikToks explaining “freak-offs” to confused white folks.
And we’ve seen the rhythm: allegation, exposure, trial-by-viral-fire.
But here’s what we ain’t seen fam:
We ain’t seen one single trial for any of the rich, white men who trafficked girls through Epstein’s network.
Not one.
Ghislaine Maxwell is sitting in prison right now for recruiting and grooming underage girls.
But who were the men she was recruiting for?
We know they exist.
We have the flight logs.
We have the tapes.
We have sworn testimony from survivors naming names.
So where are the indictments?
Where’s the mugshot of the hedge fund manager who flew on Epstein’s jet 17 times?
Where’s the court date for the British royal who settled a sex abuse lawsuit with a teenager for $12 million?
Where’s their Netflix doc?
And before someone says, “Well, we need more evidence,” remember:
Diddy got raided by Homeland Security.
Cassie had one civil suit and it opened the floodgates.
Epstein had thousands of hours of video seized by federal agents and somehow, no one else got touched.
Let’s be real.
Let’s keep it a buck.
This ain’t about justice.
It’s about which system you fall into when the accusations come.
Black men guilty or not get dragged through both courts: the legal one and the one made of headlines.
White men guilty or not often get neither.
When Bill Cosby went down, he went down hard.
When Brett Kavanaugh got accused on national television, he got a seat on the Supreme Court.
Prince Andrew got caught in 4K—with photos, plane logs, witness statements.
He paid to make it go away.
No trial. No perp walk.
Just… exile from royal duties and a slightly more awkward Christmas with the Queen.
Mare no mistake about it Diddy got what he deserved.
But don’t confuse the system’s loudness for its fairness.
The volume is not the verdict.
Because for every Black man the machine devours, there’s a white man it quietly reabsorbs into the fold.
And when the Epstein Files started to point too clearly at who those white men might be?
The system hit mute.
This Is a Protection Racket—And It’s Bipartisan
Here’s what people need to understand:
This isn’t about left versus right.
It’s not Democrats vs. Republicans.
It’s not MAGA vs. The Resistance.
It’s power protecting power.
And the Epstein Files threaten all of it.
Let’s talk facts.
When the Maxwell trial started, federal prosecutors deliberately avoided naming Epstein’s clients.
They said it would “confuse the jury.”
Translation: We’ll convict the woman who procured the girls—but not the men who abused them.
Even Maxwell’s own lawyers were like: “Hold up. Why am I the only one in here?”
Then the DOJ announced the case was “closed.”
No new charges.
No new defendants.
We got one name.
One woman.
Convicted.
Caged.
Case closed.
You think that was an accident?
You think none of the names in Epstein’s black book; CEOs, scientists, politicians, world leaders…were guilty of anything?
Or do you think the system calculated the risk, chose a scapegoat, and shut the door?
Because here’s the real kicker y’all:
The men being protected weren’t just Republicans.
Bill Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane more than two dozen times.
One of Epstein’s accusers named him in her lawsuit.
The press barely touched it.
Hillary Clinton never got asked about it on the campaign trail.
Liberal media barely blinked.
Why?
Because they’re invested in the same illusion as the right:
That their side is the side of “values.”
Of “respectability.”
Of “decency.”
So they closed ranks.
Just like the GOP closed ranks around Clarence Thomas after Anita Hill told the truth.
Just like they did with Kavanaugh, where survivors got dragged through hell and back on live television just to watch the damn man get confirmed anyway.
It’s not just politicians either.
Academia? Complicit.
Finance? Complicit.
The media? You already know.
Every time Epstein got close to being exposed, someone important stepped in.
2008: He gets a sweetheart plea deal: 13 months in a private wing of a county jail.
Allowed out 12 hours a day.
No federal time.
No co-conspirators named.
No client list released.
The U.S. Attorney who cut that deal?
Alexander Acosta.
Later became Trump’s Secretary of Labor.
Until the pressure got too loud and he resigned.
So no, this ain’t about party lines.
It’s about elite protection.
The kind that transcends elections.
The kind that rewrites headlines.
The kind that buries tapes and tells you to move on.
Epstein’s network wasn’t a glitch in the system.
It was the system.
He just got sloppy.
And someone had to clean it up.
So the media distracted us.
The courts contained it.
And both political parties agreed without ever needing to say it out loud:
“If this comes out, we all go down.”
Shine the Light or Shut Up About Justice
Let’s stop pretending we don’t know what this is.
The Epstein Files didn’t disappear.
They were buried.
By people with power.
For people with power.
And the press?
The courts?
The parties?
They’ve all played their part.
They fed us Diddy.
They fed us Cosby.
They gave us mugshots, documentaries, viral hashtags and just enough to make it feel like justice was moving.
But the real story?
The one with names that could collapse banks, end careers, revoke presidencies?
That story got killed in the edit.
So nah this piece probably won’t trend.
It might not even make it past the algorithm.
But we’re saying it anyway.
Because justice that only works on the unprotected isn’t justice.
It’s just…. ice.
It’s cold.
It’s PR.
And if you’re not willing to name names, release footage, open the sealed files, and indict the men behind those doors—
then stop lecturing the rest of us about decency.
This country doesn’t need another moral panic.
It needs a reckoning.
Because until the Epstein Files are opened…
Until the footage is shown…
Until the men in those rooms are named
Don’t tell me the system works.
Don’t tell me justice is blind.
And don’t you dare call this accountability.
Either shine the light,
or shut the hell up about justice.
P.S.
I almost didn’t post this.
I rewrote the ending three times. Sat on it for a few.
Started wondering if it was even worth saying something that would probably get buried anyway.
And maybe it still will.
But I meant every word.
And if it only reaches the folks who’ve been watching this pattern unfold with their own damn eyes…
then it reached exactly who it needed to.
This wasn’t written to go viral.
It was written to go somewhere that matters.
If you read this and think it deserves to be read by someone other than my editor—send it.
Share it.
Let it travel.
Because silence has always depended on isolation.
Thank you for saying all the ugliest stuff out loud!
I agree 100%!
Shared.