Those that love this country, must also love the moral fiber upon which it was founded. 

From that truth, it must also be true that as a society, it is a duty of all Americans to remain vigilant to remove any strand of evil that has invaded our culture’s moral fabric -- such as the corruption of our government institutions -- before it is allowed to weaken and ultimately destroy the nation our founders designed. 

Although examples of such corruption now presently abound, few put on full display what’s at stake better than our government’s recent handling of the Ghislaine Maxwell matter. 

Specifically, her case has set before us the question of whether we, as a people, are willingly turning a blind eye to our government’s complicity in protecting the anonymity of the powerful and elite among us whom our government knows to have participated in the sex trafficking of children. Or, will we take a stand and demand that our government reveal the identities of the criminal pedophiles that Epstein and Maxwell “serviced” for nearly 25 years and compel them to hold these criminals accountable for their crimes? 

How we choose to answer that question will likely define our nation’s moral trajectory for many years to come. 

To those who may doubt this characterization of our government’s corruption, perhaps it will help for them to pause and consider the implications of the following facts:  

In typical criminal cases involving more than one perpetrator, one primary reason that a prosecutor would offer a plea deal to a defendant is to extract -- i.e. legally extort -- information from that defendant about others who may have been involved in the crimes at issue -- e.g. like the pedophiles who raped the young girls she and Epstein provided.    

In Maxwell’s case, however, the prosecutors evidently decided this would not be necessary. In fact, they did just the opposite. Attempting to appear tough and unrelenting to the public, the prosecutors informed Ms. Maxwell -- and thus, the public -- that she would be offered no plea deals whatsoever. 

Why? 

There are only two possibilities -- and both may be true. 

One is that somebody either within or above the FBI and DoJ made a decision to deny Maxwell a plea deal because they did not want to risk exposing that information to the public via the offering of a plea bargain. This conclusion is corroborated by the fact that both the judge and the prosecutors in her case subsequently orchestrated her trial to be conducted in such a way that not a single one of her boss’s clients was ever identified in court. 

The second possibility for denying Maxwell a deal might be predicated on the fact that, even if she were willing to name names, our government had no need for her to provide any more such information because they already had obtained it long ago from other sources -- e.g. all the computers, documents, videos, notes, messages and digital recordings containing names and contact information that were confiscated by the FBI in the course of their raids on Epstein’s Little St. James Island and his Manhattan mansion back around the time Epstein was “suicided” in 2019. 

Whether only one, or more likely both, of these possibilities is true, one can only come to two conclusions: (i) absent the existence of corruption, our DoJ and FBI would have to admit -- i.e. cannot deny -- their possession of the identities of at least some of Maxwell’s former clients; and (ii) based on that admission, they should also have to confess to their criminal complicity in helping her to protect -- i.e. hide the identity of -- those pedophiles from justice. All of which is further evidenced by the fact that, to date, not a single one has yet been identified, much less indicted, and so, are in fact being enabled by our government to continue to roam freely among not only us, but our children.

To fully appreciate the monumental import of this fact, I urge you to please spend the seven minutes it takes to hear the heart-wrenching testimony of Anneke Lucas. 

Sold into child sex trafficking by her parents at the age of six, Anneke was thereafter raped for at least six hours every weekend for nearly six years. The perpetrators? Aristocrats and other wealthy and powerful men who were members of a “privileged” club that provided young children like Anneke as the commodities being sold to these morally grotesque ghouls. By her calculations, prior to the age of 12, she had been raped for 1,716 hours of her life by men not dissimilar, in terms of evil, to the “clients” presently being protected by Maxwell and our government. 

As Ms. Lucas’ words sink into your mind, consider further the fact that to serve her sentence, our government has conveniently placed Maxwell in a low-security, Disneyland-like federal resort -- err, “prison” -- that, among other things, offers her a broad array of pleasurable extracurricular activities such as yoga, educational classes, arts and crafts, and intramural sports. 

Is this arrangement a perk our government promised to Maxwell in exchange for her continued silence? If so, it would seem to be a torqued version of a witness protection program turned upside down: a program whereby some individuals within our government have agreed to provide a “cooperative witness” relative comfort and security in plain sight so long as she continues to assist those corrupt officials to help keep hidden all those “aristocrats and other wealthy and powerful men” they obviously are doing everything they can -- short of “suiciding” Maxwell -- to “protect.” 

Under the present circumstances of her life, the only thing that could make such a deal any sweeter for Maxwell, is if our government also secretly agreed with her to a prearranged sentence reduction at a future time provided that, even after her release, she must take her secrets to the grave to avoid the risk of triggering the ever- available “suicide” option lurking in the background. 

Given the totality of this reality, one can readily understand Maxwell’s silence. 

What can’t be understood, nor tolerated, however, is our acquiescence to our government’s unlawful complicity in that silence. 

The question is, of course, do we as a nation have the moral fortitude to take the actions necessary to expose and bring to justice the ghouls our government is presently allowing to roam among us and who are, in fact, a threat to our children? 

Or will we, as a nation take the easier path and buy into the fiction corrupt officials within our government are currently attempting to sell: 

That Maxwell really is the only person in history to be convicted for trafficking children for sex …to apparently nobody. 

Clifford C. Nichols is an attorney and the author of A Barrister’s Tales and My Unspeakable Kindergarten Experience With Kavanaugh. He may be contacted regarding this editorial at The American Landscape. 

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