By Tom Mullen
Talks Freedom
February 18, 2026
Libertarians are often characterized as a fringe movement, advocating limiting government far beyond what most Americans would even consider, and prone to promoting conspiracy theories.
All of that is true.
That doesn't mean we aren't right, even about the conspiracy theories. We almost always are. We were right about the war on terror. We were right about Obamacare. We were right about the intelligence community conducting unconstitutional mass surveillance on Americans, that it was a fundamental violation of our most basic liberties, and that it wouldn't catch a single terrorist (it didn't).
We were right when we predicted the free market would solve deplatforming and online censorship without government intervention. We were right about Covid hysteria.
The Epstein saga has been a different story. Most libertarians believe the basic tenets of the narrative - that Epstein not only was "trafficking" underage girls to a vast number of prominent "clients," but also filming their indiscretions to use as blackmail for...well, it's not clear what for but something really, really bad that's for sure.
After multiple releases of the so-called "Epstein Files," there is still no evidence of any part of that story. On the contrary, there is quite a bit of evidence against the idea that anyone other than Epstein sexually abused minors. This is the official position of the FBI:
"The files relating to Epstein include a large volume of images of Epstein, images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors, and over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography. Teams of agents, analysts, attorneys, and privacy and civil liberties experts combed through the digital and documentary evidence with the aim of providing as much information as possible to the public while simultaneously protecting victims. Much of the material is subject to court-ordered sealing. Only a fraction of this material would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial, as the seal served only to protect victims and did not expose any additional third parties to allegations of illegal wrongdoing. Through this review, we found no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials and will not permit the release of child pornography.
This systematic review revealed no incriminating"client list."There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties."
Now, this writer certainly doesn't take the FBI at its word. But in this case. It isn't just the FBI's statement that is persuasive. It is the sheer volume of files (over three million) released that seem to be completely consistent with this statement.
To this, proponents of the Epstein narrative reply that the government is holding back the incriminating material. They also point out that there are still redactions in the released files that are concealing perpetrators. In regard to the latter point, the first six names unredacted under pressure from Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna were a colossal failure.
Four of the six men turned out to be participants in a police lineup unrelated to the case. A fifth was Leslie Wexner, Epstein's financial client, whose name appears throughout the files. Unfortunately for the true believers, even Bradley Edwards, attorney for many of the Epstein accusers, including the late Virginia Giuffre, is on the record stating Wexner was not involved in Epstein's sexual crimes.
Edwards made these statements despite having already represented Giuffre in Epstein-related matters. In other words, Giuffre's own lawyer didn't believe her about Wexner.
Then we come to the sixth name, that of Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem. Sulayem was the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of DP World and the chairman of the Ports, Customs & Free Zone Corporation until a few days ago. He was forced to resign over an email among the Epstein files that The Telegraph described as "chilling,"
In it, Epstein wrote to Sulayem, "I loved the torture video."
Here, we finally have our smoking gun. Surely, Epstein is referring to a video, presumably shared with him by Sulayem, depicting the sexual torture of a teenage girl, right?
Wrong. Based on the timing of the email, it almost certainly refers to a 2004 video that surfaced in 2009 apparently showing Sheikh Issa bin Zayed Al Nahyan (a brother of the then-UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and part of Abu Dhabi's ruling family) torturing an adult male merchant over some business dispute. Epstein is apparently being sarcastic as this was a scandal in Sulayem's home country. But it had nothing to do with sexual abuse of minors nor with Sulayem personally.
So, the much reported unmasking didn't just strike out, it struck out twice (two sets of three strikes). It also appears to have unjustly smeared six innocent men, at least in terms of any sexual crimes related to Epstein. That Sulayem had to resign is not just an inconvenience. His may be the first life destroyed by this witch hunt for no good reason. It won't be the last.
This should be a clarion call to everyone howling for action against Epstein's supposed "clients" to slow down. They got what they wanted and it blew up in their faces. Whatever they believe the government may still be hiding, innocent people were harmed here and that should mean something.
We don't know what, if anything, the government is holding back at this point. But the mere existence of over three million files that provide no evidence of any trafficking operation other than to Epstein himself, no evidence of anyone being blackmailed, no evidence of the existence of any part of the narrative whatsoever, should at least give the believers some pause. But it won't.
The problem with mass hysteria is evidence no longer matters. People form an emotional attachment to the narrative and once they fervently desire it to be true, nothing will dissuade them.
Many tribes have a reason to want the Epstein narrative to be true. Democrats believe it will allow them to finally take down Trump. Republicans believe it will allow them to take down "the globalists," their boogeymen of choice, and clear the way for them to make America great again. A subset of Christians believe the Epstein sex trafficking ring was run by devil worshippers, with the help of history's oldest scapegoat himself, and that burning them all at the stake (figurately) will result in the triumph of good over evil. Or something.
Libertarians believe - in some half-baked, uncharacteristically illogical way - it will result in a more libertarian society.
They are particularly susceptible to this type of hysteria because of what I call The Libertarian Delusion. The Delusion isn't that there are myriad interest groups conspiring to trample our liberty and loot our wealth. There are. The organizations libertarians point to, like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, the World Economic Forum, along with the Deep State within government, all do plot, sometimes secretly, sometimes right out in the open, to do just that.
The Delusion is that the majority or even a significant minority of Americans are yearning for freedom and that exposing these conspiracies will result in that constituency rising up, overthrowing the tyrants, and establishing a more libertarian America.
They're not and they won't. We know this because we've seen what they do time and time again when these plotters are exposed. Edward Snowden masterfully exposed the Deep State lying over and over about mass surveillance of innocent Americans - waiting for them to respond to one release and then showing even that response was a lie - and...crickets.
Contrary to another libertarian fever dream, Ron Paul did not lose the 2012 Republican presidential primary by a landslide because the primaries were stolen (Maine may have been) or because his campaign was "blacked out." Paul got far more media attention than his true voter support warranted.
He lost because the American public got the best presentation of libertarian principles in a century and rejected it outright. That wasn't Ron Paul's fault. It was the public's fault.
The truth is most American's don't even know how to think in libertarian terms and haven't for many generations. They had a libertarian republic for over a century and decided they didn't want it anymore. That wasn't a good decision but it's the one they made.
Today, the vast majority of Americans are resentful of business owners, contemptuous of liberty, not only easily led into government fiascos like the war on terror or Covid lockdowns but eager to shout down any dissidents on the government's behalf, and are only dissatisfied with government because it isn't doing more. I wish that weren't true, but it is.
If the Epstein narrative turned out to be true and was exposed in its entirety, Americans wouldn't want to take power away from the government. They'd want to give it more so that "this can never happen again." And they would blame capitalism for making the perpetrators so rich that they could get away with something like this.
Deep down, every libertarian honest with himself knows this is true, whether he wants to believe it or not.
The reality is achieving a libertarian America is much harder than simply exposing a conspiracy, real or imagined. It is persuading people whose parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were raised from infants immersed in the progressive religion to reject everything they've ever been taught in school, read in books, or watched on television, in the movies, or on their phones.
It is much easier to embrace the delusion. And so libertarians relentlessly pursue conspiracies, most of which are real, and a few that aren't.
The Epstein narrative is of the latter variety. And even if it weren't, it wouldn't matter.
This article was originally published on Tom Mullen Talks Freedom.
Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From ? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness ? Part One and host of the Tom Mullen Talks Freedom podcast.