WASHINGTON — Americans believe that wealthy and powerful people are rarely held accountable, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found after the release of millions of records on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's connections in elite US business and political circles.
Some 69 per cent of respondents in the four-day poll, which concluded on Monday (Feb 16), said their views were captured "very well" or "extremely well" by a statement that the Epstein files "show that powerful people in the US are rarely held accountable for their actions".
Another 17 per cent said the statement described their views "somewhat well," while 11 per cent said it didn't reflect their thinking. Among both Republicans and Democrats, more than 80 per cent said the statement described their thinking at least somewhat well.
Under congressional orders, the US Justice Department has released trove after trove of documents that tie the late financier to a range of prominent people in politics, finance, academia and business, both before and after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to prostitution charges, including soliciting an underage girl.
Epstein's 2019 death in a Manhattan jail cell following his arrest on charges of sex trafficking of minors was ruled a suicide.
The scandal has proven a persistent political headache for President Donald Trump, who long fanned the flames of suspicions around Epstein and has been dogged by criticism that his administration was failing to fully disclose all that the US government knew about the case.
The disclosures have started to cause the downfall of prominent people. Executives at Goldman Sachs and Hyatt Hotels have resigned.
Others have retained powerful posts. Trump's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick apparently visited Epstein's private island for lunch in 2012 and invited him to a fundraiser in 2015 for Hillary Clinton, Trump's Democratic rival in the 2016 presidential election, emails show.
Dr Mehmet Oz, Trump's administrator of the US Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services, emailed an invitation to a Valentine's Day party in 2016 to Epstein, the Justice Department documents show.
Neither Lutnick nor Oz is accused of wrongdoing.
The Republican president, who socialized extensively with Epstein in the 1990s and 2000s, has denied any knowledge of the financier's crimes and says he broke off ties in the early 2000s, before Epstein's plea deal.
While Americans generally have low expectations that elites will be held accountable, they are somewhat split along partisan lines on how much longer the nation should dwell on the Epstein affair.
Asked if their views were well described by the statement that "it's time for the country to move on from talking about the Epstein files," 67 per cent of Republican respondents in the poll said this captured their thinking at least somewhat well, while only 21 per cent of Democrats said the same.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted online and nationwide, gathered responses from 1,117 US adults and had a margin of error of three percentage points.
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