"The administration inserted a photo into the files..."
Reflections on "the Epstein Files," narrative-building, and charging at windmills
All year long, the rallying cry has echoed from coast to coast. People shouted it in the streets, scrawled it on walls, and wrote it in comments under every single news article related to anything Trump-y.
“Release the Epstein Files.”
People said anything and everything was a distraction from “the Epstein Files.” If Trump insults trans people? He’s distracting from “the Epstein Files.” When he bombs Iran, it’s because he doesn’t want us talking about “the Epstein Files.” When he throws a hissy-fit over not having won the Nobel Peace Prize, we shouldn’t even react, because “the Epstein Files.”
Finally, in November, the government nearly-unanimously passed “The Epstein Files Transparency Act.” The Department of Justice is now required to release “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in DOJ's possession that relate to the investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein.”
They were supposed to do that by Friday, but instead they’ve started releasing things in drips and drabs. Trump himself seems to have been entirely redacted, any documents involving the president swimming in black ink if not left entirely out of the release. Instead, they’ve released hundreds of thousands of images, documents, etc. that have been stripped of any and all context.
It’s a lot of information, but… we’re struggling to understand what it is we’ve been given, and we’re reacting in ways that make me very nervous for the fight ahead.
Earlier this year, I wrote a piece for David Farrier’s Webworm about my experience sharing my politically-charged photography to Reddit. I’ve been very concerned by how people seem quite unable to process images in context, to understand when they’ve been given context, and to understand when the lack of context is intentional.
I concluded that this all due to a shift in the way we are communicating, as a species. I think we no longer agree on any shared definition of anything. We no longer have any shared acknowledgment that words mean things, and that certain can stand in for other things, and that it’s important to be able to interpret those things.
It’s why United States Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says – faced with emails that contain the credible suggestion that Vladimir Putin has sexual-assault-related blackmail on the President of the United States – that “These emails prove absolutely nothing, other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.” She’s exploiting the fact that we no longer have a shared understanding of what we mean by “these emails,” “prove,” “nothing,” “fact,” and “wrong.”
You may have seen this viral post all over the Internet yesterday from MeidasTouch, a #Resistance “news organization” that spreads information critical of the Trump regime. They shared it to Instagram, Facebook, Threads, BlueSky, and X, and people re-shared the information across untold subreddits, too. Based on the reactions, it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say millions of people have seen and believed this post.
The top reply on BlueSky:
The top reply on a Reddit repost (on /r/ThePeoplesPress) of the MeidasTouch post, which was titled “The White House Lied Again:”
…we’re in trouble.
These are quite clearly two different photos.
Whoever took the photo on the left — the one from “the Epstein Files” — was standing several feet to the left of the person who took the photo on the right. In fact, that thing in the bottom-right corner of the photo on the left might even be the corduroy-clad elbow of the person taking the picture on the right.
They were taken at different angles, with a different type of camera, at a slightly-different instant in time. It’s bizarre to me that people can’t see that, and it speaks to what I’ve been writing about all year: we are rapidly losing our ability to decode images.
I spent a few hours last night trying to point this out to people on Reddit, across various threads and with various approaches. Shoutout to u/PM_UR_DICK_PL5, who said that I’d commented so many times that I’m either being paid or displaying mental illness. I wish I was being paid, but it was just a good old ADHD hyperfixation… so, yes…
Here’s one reply from someone on Reddit, pushing back against me saying there’s nothing here for Getty to sue over.
What do you mean you read somewhere that it’s a derivative work that merely photoshops in a blanket? Use your own eyes! Everything else about the photo is different, too! MJ’s face partially obscures Bill Clinton in the one released by the DOJ. Michael and Diana are looking different directions. We can see different parts of the lights on the ceiling… because they are different photos taken from different angles!
“The same photo from a different angle” is a different photo! That’s what photos are! We are not able to understand the meaning of what we are being shown because we don’t understand what “a photo” is!
The existence of a second photo from the same event in no way proves that the government was lying about having come across the first photo in the course of investigating Epstein. That reasoning is just nonsensical, and it’s unsettling to me that it spread so rapidly and took hold so quickly.
I think the confusion stems from the fact that, as a people, we don’t understand what “the Epstein Files” are.
We’ve spent the year calling for them to be released, and now we’re getting to look at them, and we have no idea what we’re seeing.
They are not “any document the government once thought proved Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile.” They are not “the case file they would’ve used as evidence, had they prosecuted him.”
They are “anything they swept up in the course of a years-long investigation into a vast, multi-national criminal organization.”
If Bill texted this picture to Epstein to brag about hanging out with The King of Pop? It’s “in the Epstein files.” If Ghislaine made it her desktop background cause she thought Bill looked hot? It’s “in the Epstein files.” If the photographer who took the picture had their memory card seized by the government because they’re the cousin of someone who sent Epstein a lot of money, it’s “in the Epstein files.”
We simply don’t know.
These are documents that have intentionally been stripped of any and all context.
The only context we’ve been given is that the government says they came across this photo while investigating Epstein. That’s it. Anything further is an inference.
If you want the argument to be that they selectively released this photo — and that they selectively redacted the identities of people we already knew — so that we would draw incorrect conclusions about Jacko and Slick Willie being involved in Epstein’s crimes, then I’m in total agreement.
They are absolutely selectively releasing certain photos and selectively redacting certain children so that we are meant to think certain things about who’s a pedophile. It’s illegal to withhold and redact evidence the way they have been, and they need to be held to account.
…but that is a completely different argument than “the administration inserted it into the files [and we know because there’s a different photo of the same event on Getty Images].”
People accused me of playing semantics, but it’s important that we’re able to insist on precise definitions and meaning here, because the imprecise insinuations are what let them discredit our entire point. The lack of context is intentional, and it’s important that we recognize what that does to our ability to draw logically-sound conclusions. They want us to embarrass ourselves by charging at windmills, so that they can deny the existence of the giant on the hillside; if we jettison the essential meaning of the things we’re talking about, the only conversation we can have is whether or not “there is a big shape in front of us.”
We’re right to be suspicious, but it’s important we are able to explain why.
In trying to talk about this with people online, the reactions have been unsettling.
People have told me that, regardless of whether those are the same photo — entirely unwilling to grant me the objective fact that they are not — it just all seems “sus.” …yes, but, if we ever want to get to some essential truth about the matter, we should be able to drill down into why we are suspicious.
“They are creating a narrative” is not, in any way, proof that we are right to think this photo was never collected as part of the investigation.
I clarified what “the Epstein Files” are, and I pointed out that these are two different photos, and that the existence of the second in no way implies that the first was “inserted into the files” by the government. Someone who later blocked me replied:
…that’s an intellectually-bankrupt form of reasoning.
“These people would falsify evidence” does not mean “this evidence has been falsified.” It’s especially meaningless if you are entirely unable to explain, when pressed, what you mean by “this evidence” or “falsified.”
So, this is all to say… be careful.
This is an important moment in history. The narrative surrounding the evidence of an openly-corrupt pedophile president is taking shape in real time, playing out in social media comment sections all around us. If we distrust everything, on every level, just because we are right to distrust some things… then there’s nothing left to trust.
“The administration inserted it into the files” is a meaningless, baseless accusation. “Another photo exists of the same event” does not discredit anything, and we look ridiculous when we parrot a viral post that says it does.
We need to focus on the real issue: they’re blatantly withholding evidence of the President’s obvious, years-long involvement in a sex trafficking empire, in violation of the law that says they must release that evidence. Let’s press them on that, instead of wasting our time talking about Getty Images suing the government for claiming they collected a different photo at some point in the course of the investigation. What are you people even saying.