Democrats rushed to paper over last week’s embarrassment after released documents showed Delegate Stacey Plaskett exchanging messages with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a 2019 congressional hearing, and their leadership’s response was both defensive and limp. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was pressed on live television about whether such messaging was appropriate and repeatedly dodged the question, insisting instead that the real focus should be on releasing the Epstein files. That response looks less like leadership and more like damage control for a party that thinks its own are above scrutiny.
The texts themselves are damning enough to require answers, not rhetoric. The newly released cache shows Epstein texting about the hearing and even suggesting lines of questioning, while Plaskett’s replies suggested she was “very aware and waiting my turn.” Whatever legal line Democrats now cling to, the optics of a congresswoman trading messages with a convicted sex offender during official proceedings is unacceptable to decent, law-abiding Americans.
Republicans tried to hold Plaskett accountable with a censure resolution and an effort to remove her from the House Intelligence Committee, but the measure narrowly failed on a near-party-line vote. That result only stokes the bipartisan mistrust of Washington’s insider culture, where rank-and-file Americans see one set of rules for the political class and a different, softer set for its favorites. The country deserves institutions that treat every representative the same — not protective cover-ups.
Instead of owning the problem, House Democrats summoned textbook deflection: insist on process, attack the motives of critics, and demand that attention be focused elsewhere. Jeffries’ public posture — lecturing about transparency while refusing to say whether messaging with a registered sex offender was appropriate — sounded like a leader willing to defend members instead of leading a reckoning. That kind of reflexive tribalism explains why voters have had enough of elite immunity.
To make matters worse, Democrats are trying to pivot the conversation toward the release of the so-called Epstein files, as if transparency on paper absolves moral rot in practice. Congress did move to force more documents into the light, which is good, but releasing documents is not a substitute for immediate accountability for elected officials who fraternized, in any form, with a known predator. Americans want the truth and consequences, not a staged transparency tour.
The media circus that followed shows the left’s playbook: weaponize outrage when convenient, bury it when it implicates your own. Conservatives should demand the same standard of scrutiny that progressives apply to their political enemies — no exceptions, no double standards. If Democrats object to accountability, then force them to explain why contact with a convicted sex offender during a hearing is defensible. Silence and evasions are not answers.
Patriots who believe in equal justice under the law should use this moment to press for real reforms: full, impartial ethics reviews, clear committee standards for conduct, and a culture that prioritizes victims over power. Republicans were right to call out this conduct and wronged when the censure failed; the fight for integrity in government is not over. Let every member of Congress be judged by the same yardstick — and let those who traded with predators answer for it.
