How the Epstein Files Intersect with the SBC Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis

During March and April this year, the Department of Justice diverted hundreds of employees to repeatedly scour the Epstein files.

It was a “frenetic scramble” that “consumed” the Justice Department as it pursued what was described as “a single goal” – to “find something – anything – that could be released to the public to satisfy President Trump’s supporters.”

Thus, it appears to have been an effort pursued for political ends more so than for any ends of justice for child rape victims.

This picture of the document review process was based in large measure on the accounts of three former FBI and Justice Department officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fears of retaliation.

With more than 100,000 pages of materials to review, hundreds of FBI employees and federal prosecutors went through the Epstein files at least four times, including once for the specific purpose of flagging any mention of Donald Trump and other celebrities.

And yes… Donald Trump’s name was in the files. That much has been revealed – to no one’s surprise – but it remains unclear how significant the references to Trump were.

Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in 2005 (Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan/Getty Images)

With such a massive shift of employees and resources, other DOJ efforts were sidelined.

Based on the timeline, it appears that one of those sidelined efforts may have been the DOJ probe into sexual abuse within the country’s largest Protestant faith group, the Southern Baptist Convention.

The DOJ shut down the SBC investigation in March, during the exact same time when it was diverting hundreds of employees to scour the Epstein files.

Plenty of top Southern Baptist leaders crowed about the investigation’s shut-down as though it constituted proof that the whole SBC abuse crisis were “a hoax.” But, of course, their crowing was nothing more than chest-pounding. The absence of federal prosecutions doesn’t equate with an absence of criminal conduct. And nothing about the DOJ’s shut-down did anything to negate the facts already documented by the Abuse of Faith exposé, the Guidepost investigatory report, and the SBC Executive Committee’s own long-secret list of clergy sex abusers.

Now it appears the DOJ’s shut-down of the SBC abuse investigation may have actually been due to its diversion of resources for scouring the Epstein files.

Would the DOJ’s probe of the SBC have been shut down anyway, regardless of the DOJ’s frantic need to divert employees to scouring the Epstein files?

I don’t know.

But heaps of evidence suggests that Trump likes to punish his perceived enemies and reward his loyalists. And no group has been more loyal to Trump – and to Trumpism – than the Southern Baptist Convention.

So, it appears the DOJ dealt a double whammy in its abandonment of the pursuit of justice for child sex abuse coverups: 1) In shifting resources toward a self-serving scouring of the Epstein files, and 2) in simultaneously shutting down its probe of sexual abuse within the SBC.

And in all of this, what I see is that, for the powerful, the child victims are last on the list of anyone’s concern. Justice and care for the victims are no one’s priority.

Meanwhile, the Epstein files still remain under wraps; the DOJ has granted limited immunity to convicted sex trafficker and longtime Epstein ally Ghislaine Maxwell; and Trump has declined to rule out the possibility of a presidential pardon for Maxwell.

For more on the ruses and maneuvers of the Southern Baptist Convention, check out my book, Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal, and Transformation.