On December 28, 2023, Raúl Torrez, the attorney general of New Mexico, made a landmark announcement: Deutsche Bank, the multinational financial services giant, would be partnering with the state to “fight human trafficking.” A pledge of $4.95 million was generously agreed to “prevent, investigate, and prosecute human trafficking” across New Mexico. Here at last was a major institution taking a stand against “trafficking,” which the attorney general’s office had labeled “modern-day slavery.” As a triumphant Torrez declared: “The fight against human trafficking and sexual exploitation extends to the corporate board room.”
Since that initial announcement, though, little has been communicated about the destination of the Deutsche Bank funds. Documents I obtained through a public records request show where at least some of the money went: $754,539.53 was promptly wired to a lawyer in Washington, DC, named Linda Singer, whom the New York Times once profiled as national innovator in the practice of “Coaxing Attorneys General” to sue various far-flung corporate entities, whereupon Singer would “Create Big Paydays” for herself and her colleagues. Beyond that, it remains unclear how these funds have been spent in New Mexico. Singer’s share amounted to 15 percent of the total “pledge” money, plus expenses.
The payment by Deutsche Bank was part of a broader effort across the financial services sector to expunge its past “trafficking” sins. On October 20, 2023, federal judge Jed S. Rakoff had finalized the terms of a class-action settlement, totalling $75 million, by which Deutsche Bank would agree to compensate the multitudinous alleged victims of its former client, Jeffrey Epstein. An essentially identical settlement model (worth $290 million) was also brokered between the “victims” and JP Morgan; Judge Rakoff appointed a mediator, Simone Lelchuk, to oversee both.
It thereby fell to Lelchuk to determine eligibility—up to $5 million per claimant, and tax-free to boot, thanks to a quirk in the IRS code that was gamely inserted into the arcane settlement provisions. Anyone doubtful that Lelchuk was qualified to make such expensive unilateral judgements would be quickly reassured by the knowledge that she had once received a “Trauma Informed Certification” from the National Center for Equity & Agency, in Palm Coast, Fla., which boasts that it is “the only consulting firm in the nation to be fully focused on sexual misconduct AND diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).” The firm claims to be a national leader in topics including “consent,” “sexual harassment,” “trauma-informed care,” “cultural humility,” “neurodiversity,” “LGBTQ competencies,” “micro-aggressions,” and “decolonization.” Equipped with this invaluable training, and empowered by Judge Rakoff, Lelchuk went on to confidentially adjudicate the disbursement of hundreds of millions of dollars from two of the world’s largest commercial banking institutions.
So it was in this context that the New Mexico Attorney General’s office could profitably get in on the action, and agree to resolve any outstanding claims against Deutsche Bank—in furtherance of what both parties described as their “common goal to combat human trafficking,” according to a signed execution agreement. The agreement stipulates that the payment “does not represent a fine or penalty of any sort.” Nevertheless, upon receipt of the funds, the State of New Mexico “fully and irrevocably releases any claims of any kind … that the State may have against Deutsche Bank in any way concerning or related to Epstein.” One of Epstein’s many luxurious properties, known as Zorro Ranch, was located in New Mexico—prompting a flurry of inquests to divine where the state might seize various assets. Eventually this resulted in the fortuitous Deutsche Bank pact.
The execution agreement says the “pledge” would first be deposited in the “Attorney General’s Office’s Consumer Fund.” This account supplies approximately 50 percent of the attorney general’s operating budget. Last month, the Albuquerque Journal reported that a spokeswoman for the state Department of Justice said “the office collected $15 million in all from banks associated with Epstein to support efforts to combat human trafficking.” Indeed, New Mexico also received a plentiful settlement from JP Morgan—for a total of $14,820,500 in Epstein-related revenues as of May 2025.
“Such is the boundless conceptual elasticity of ‘trafficking.’”
In a certain way, it’s fitting that ostensible “trafficking” survivors would now be governmentally grouped into the same category as “consumers” who might have been ripped off by faulty kitchen appliances or air conditioners. Such is the boundless conceptual elasticity of “trafficking”—a category that has been progressively expanded by prosecutors, elected officials, and plaintiff’s lawyers. A veritable industry of NGOs, professional associations, and law enforcement groups now exists to eliminate this fearsome scourge.
As with “racism” or “addiction,” though, few tangible benchmarks have been articulated to establish when the malady has been defeated, or even discernibly mitigated. In the meantime, there are always new grants to be awarded, new restorative justice paradigms to be introduced, and new victim-locating strategies to be hatched at conferences and webinars. And fortunately for the booming Anti-Trafficking Industry, its labors are largely insulated from any appreciable oversight, much less political critique; both left and right are heavily invested in this multi-faceted project for distinct but overlapping reasons.
Witness, for instance, the rare bipartisan cooperation recently on display in the US Congress: Republican mavericks like Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace, and Lauren Boebert have locked arms with the entire House Democratic caucus to demand release of what they’ve taken to calling the “Epstein Files.” Whereas Republicans in the mix often cite such motivating factors as their strong Christian faith, an abiding belief in the existence of hidden elite pedophilia networks, and their resolve to uncover illicit Israeli influence operations, Democrats seem mainly interested in harnessing a wedge issue against Donald Trump. What emerges, in miniature, is a strange sort of ideological coalition—the likes of which can also be observed throughout the immense Anti-Trafficking Industry.
The Anti-Trafficking Industry is so sprawling, with such a vast interlocking constellation of state and nonprofit actors, that to audit its full scope in any kind of comprehensive manner would be nearly impossible. Still, upon even limited examination, a key recurring theme quickly becomes apparent: the formidable alliance of Christian conservatives and identity-focused liberals, united in shared conviction that “trafficking” is an acute societal crisis, and that addressing it requires massive public and private resources.
Take one example: the Slave 2 Nothing® Foundation, founded in 2016 by Lynsi Snyder-Ellingson, the billionaire heiress of the In-N-Out Burger fortune. With a stated mission “to help those who are enslaved,” the organization turns its attention to both physical and spiritual enslavement. This directive sprung from an epiphany, she has explained. “After multiple affairs and divorces,” the billionaire burger magnate “struggled to find purpose with her life.” So one day, she “cried out to God and asked to be used by him.” The result was the formation of an evangelical ministry, called Army of Love, which exhorts would-be “soldiers” to “enlist,” whereupon they profess a creed of Biblical infallibility, rebuke the corruptions of “carnal religion,” and affirm a “strategic battle plan” to conquer “the Devil and his Demonic Realm.”
This “spiritual warfare” campaign declared by Snyder-Ellingson was later augmented by the establishment of her anti-trafficking venture, the Slave 2 Nothing Foundation, whose activities include holding benefit concerts, participating in National Human Trafficking Awareness Month, and awarding annual financial grants to a wide variety of recipient organizations, such as Hookers For Jesus, Truckers Against Trafficking, and the San Diego Harbor Police Foundation. (Grants are distributed across states where In-N-Out Burger does business.) Another entity, Saving Innocence Inc., received $145,000 between 2019 and 2023. Based in Los Angeles, Saving Innocence Inc. offers training courses (at a cost of $1,199 for organizations, $349 for individuals) to educate customers about “our nation’s human trafficking epidemic,” as well as best practices in “trauma informed and trauma responsive” care. It likewise collaborates on initiatives to encourage the cultivation of “inclusive services and spaces” for “LGBTQIA2S+ Youth.” According to one of its sponsored reports, “LGBTQIA2S+ youth of color” are at especially high risk of “trafficking,” due to the pervasive stigma they endure, which also “intersects with the negative effects of systemic and individual racism,” as well as transphobia and heterosexism. The report recommends “public agencies” take steps to ensure greater access to “gender-affirming care” for “transgender and non-binary youth,” especially “hormone therapy and name changes on legal documents”—as this will purportedly reduce the prevalence of unwanted trafficking. Government officials are advised to “model inclusive language by introducing yourself with your own pronouns,” and by “inviting youth to share their pronouns.” Further, these officials should “signal acceptance of LGBTQIA2S+ people in physical spaces, such as having a pride flag by your desk.”
How a born-again billionaire’s evangelizing zeal could have wound up producing such outer-limit innovations in NGO-incubated cultural liberalism might seem a bit mysterious—but such is the inscrutable web of anti-trafficking ventures that have proliferated in recent years, flush with cash from a diverse array of benefactors. Saving Innocence, Inc. trumpets an impressive roster of government and corporate “partners,” including Boeing, Apple, Google, LinkedIn, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. It is also a “co-leader” of something called the Los Angeles Regional Human Trafficking Task Force—a law enforcement consortium funded by the federal Department of Justice. Recent prosecutions touted by this LA-area Task Force include two 19-year-old males charged in March 2025 with “human trafficking of a minor.” Details are scant as of this writing—a lawyer for the defendants did not return phone calls—but according to a celebratory press release issued by District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman, at least one of the purported victims was 17 years old. It will no doubt be illuminating to learn what coercive “trafficking” powers the 19-year-old male suspects are alleged to have exerted over female “victims” two years younger than them.
“Has ‘trafficking’ really exploded across the United States by approximately 800 percent in the past 15 years?”
Perhaps the ever-expanding range of conduct that prosecutors can creatively categorize as “trafficking” might help explain why, between 2011 and 2024, federal grants for these Human Trafficking Task Forces ballooned from $10 million to $101 million. Has “trafficking” really exploded across the United States by approximately 800 percent in the past 15 years? Or is it the ideological contours of “trafficking” that have been exploded—by grant-seeking police departments, social workers, nonprofit entrepreneurs, and other interested parties? Either way, according to the restless cadre of professional anti-trafficking activists, a conspicuously high-growth industry unto themselves, the need for even more taxpayer resources has never been greater.
In May 2025, a federally-funded report on the Hartford, Connecticut regional Task Force bemoaned the lack of a “centralized… governance structure to administer the state’s human trafficking response.” Policy recommendations were made to rectify this alleged problem, which was said to be impairing the development of a sufficiently robust “survivor-centered system” to “hold traffickers accountable.” Harrowing statistics illustrated the extent to which “victims” had been neglected due to a claimed lack of resources. With the Task Force having started operations in January 2022, the report says “between 2022 and 2024, the number of human trafficking investigations in the region has risen over 200 percent.” Local media duly repeated these figures.
But the 35 “stakeholders” who collectively comprise this one area Task Force were able to identify only 49 trafficking victims in the span of two years. According to the report, 27 were minors, and 22 were adults. No criteria is listed for how any particular individual was designated a “victim,” nor is it specified whether that designation was contingent on a criminal conviction, cross-examination, or any impartial fact-finding procedures. In a region with a population of around 1.5 million—and with millions of dollars flowing in from federal, state, and local agencies, with an explicit mandate to identify as many “victims” as possible—is this really the out-of-control epidemic we’ve been so gravely warned about? Or is it a jobs program?
The rapid growth of the Anti-Trafficking Industry—along with the legal, political, and cultural attitudes it prodigiously engenders—has played no small role in the unceasing saga of Jeffrey Epstein, which was revivified in spectacular fashion during the summer of 2025. Epstein himself may have perished in 2019, but the Anti-Trafficking Industry has steadily blossomed ever since—and along with it the mass integration of “trafficking,” “grooming,” and “trauma” jargon into popular vocabulary. When it comes to the Epstein saga, inglorious ironies abound. But the most jarring of them flow from the core “trafficking” premise, and its near-infinite mutability.
“When it comes to the Epstein saga, inglorious ironies abound.”
On September 3, 2025, I came across Haley Robson, one of the “Epstein Survivors” who had gathered that day in front of the US Capitol. The occasion was a press conference organized by two congressmen, Republican Thomas Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna, to demand passage of their co-sponsored legislation to compel release of the “Epstein Files.” The two representatives were joined by a coterie of “Epstein Survivors” who shared harrowing testimony of their tribulations with “trafficking.” Their lead attorney, Bradley Edwards, presided over the vivid exhibition. Congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Greene and Victoria Spartz were also present.
Robson delivered a passionate and indignant speech before the assembled crowd. Years before, she had played a central role in the early Epstein criminal chronology. It has long been established that in 2005, Robson was the individual responsible for recruiting, enticing, soliciting, and otherwise facilitating a 14-year-old girl’s liaison with Epstein in Palm Beach, under the auspices of giving him a “massage.” You might even say that Robson “trafficked” the girl—at least by the wording of the main federal anti-trafficking statute, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which expressly requires that no “force, fraud, or coercion“ need be inflicted on a person to be considered a victim of trafficking, so long as that person has not attained the age of 18. In other words, a person under 18 can be “trafficked,” according to the US criminal code, if another person recruits, entices, or otherwise “causes” them to engage in a “commercial sex act”—even if they perceive themselves as willing participants. (The statute defines “commercial sex act” as “any sex act, on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person.”) Meddlesome technicalities aside, Robson’s procurement of the 14-year-old girl is what precipitated the initial police investigation of Epstein, and thus the beginnings of an incredibly long-winded, convoluted, and maddening legal ordeal.
Under questioning from lawyers and police, the 14-year-old girl relayed that it was Robson who had first told her about Epstein, explained his desire for “massages,” drove her to Epstein’s house, and instructed her to lie about her age—because if Epstein found out she was under 18, she would not be allowed to take part in the “massage,” and thus wouldn’t receive the $200 or $300 in cash that Epstein typically gave the revolving-door of amateur “masseuses” who were constantly funneling in and out of his opulent manor.
In a March 2005 police interview, about one month after the fateful encounter, the girl was asked by a detective: “At any time, did he speak to you, or does he know how old you are—did he know how old you were?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Haley said, tell him you’re 18, because if you’re not, he won’t let you in his house.” The girl explained, “as I was giving him a massage, he was like, how old are you.” And she told him she was 18. The girl was consistent on this point across time. In a February 2008 deposition, she was again asked: “Who told you that when you got to Jeff Epstein’s house you should lie to Jeff about your age?”
“Haley Robson,” she replied.
“So you told Jeff that you were 18 years old, correct?”
“Yes.”
While the girl insisted that she never had sex with Epstein, and only ever saw him on that one occasion, she did say she stripped down to her underwear and straddled Epstein’s buttocks while performing the requested massage. Other girls at her high school later heard about the incident, and gossip spread like wildfire; a fight broke out, and eventually the girl’s stepmother called local police. The ensuing investigation led to a probable cause affidavit being issued for Robson’s arrest—she was 18 herself at the time—but she was never prosecuted.
And now here was Robson, two decades later, in Washington, DC, making her dramatic foray into political advocacy—as a “trafficking survivor.”
I asked her, “Is it true that you told other girls that they should lie about their age?”
“I mean, aren’t those in the documents that the judge in South Florida released?” Robson replied.
“So it’s true?” I asked.
“You could talk to Brad Edwards,” she said. “He has all the transcripts.” Edwards is the Florida plaintiff’s attorney who has made a career out of representing innumerable Epstein “victims,” to great financial reward, and collaborated with Massie and Khanna to engineer the DC press conference.
“I’m asking you,” I said to Robson. “You’re here, right?”
“I think that was part of the abuse,” she said. “And I’ve answered you.”
“So part of the abuse was you telling other girls to lie and say they were 18?”
“Part of the abuse was grooming. I’m done with this interview.”
With that, Haley Robson, who in the early-to-mid 2000s had been surreptitiously recorded by police declaring with evident satisfaction, “I’m like a Heidi Fleiss” (referring to the “Hollywood Madame”), was recast in 2025 as a sex-trafficking survivor.
Having recast herself in such fashion, with the help of victim-amplifying journalists and aggressively inventive lawyers, Robson made herself eligible for millions in settlement dollars. Conveniently for her, the litigation process has come to operate like a well-oiled machine. In the pair of lawsuits they brought against JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank, Bradley Edwards and co-counsel David Boies asserted that Epstein’s criminal enterprise “had everything a sex-trafficking organization needed—funding, infrastructure, the appearance of legitimacy, and perhaps most importantly a complicit banking institution. It was by many accounts the most powerful and wealthiest sex-trafficking venture ever created.” For the purposes of Edwards and Boies, “wealthiest” was a key descriptor. In a June 2023 hearing, Boies sought to persuade Judge Rakoff to approve his request that 30 percent of the anticipated settlement funds be earmarked for “legal fees.” At first, the judge found this exorbitant. “30 percent seems awfully high,” he remarked. “30 percent strikes me as a little rich under the circumstances.”
Nonetheless, Rakoff eventually did approve the request. And so the firms Boies Schiller Flexner and Edwards Henderson Lehrman did in fact receive 30 percent of the eventual settlement funds, plus millions in additional expenses. With a total of $365 million disbursed between Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan, simply do the arithmetic in terms of what kind of paydays these lawyers have enjoyed in their high-minded crusade against “trafficking.”
One could certainly argue that Edwards, Boies, et al. did in some sense deserve their winnings, given the legal creativity they have undoubtedly demonstrated. The initial complaint filed against Deutsche Bank was brought on behalf of a “Jane Doe” who it was alleged had first met and been abused by Epstein in 2003. Then, continuously for the next 15 years, she was “trafficked”—before finally managing to escape Epstein’s grip in 2018. The lawyers’ explanation for how it was that Jane Doe, at all relevant times an adult, could have spent 15 years in hellish sex-trafficking captivity without ever extricating herself? She’d been “coerced into a cult-like life,” and thus became “conditioned” to believe what she’d experienced was “normal.” Edwards and Boies even claim that Epstein convinced his victims he was the “messiah.” As such, the lawyers maintain, “Jane Doe” was entitled to relief under the Trafficking Victim Protection Act, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”), and the New York Adult Survivors Act. The argument paid off handsomely.
When the government prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell under the Trafficking Victim Protection Act, and was preparing to call witnesses at trial, it purportedly had “over one thousand” victims to choose from. Or at least, that was the contention made by the DOJ and FBI in their now-infamous memo, dated July 6, 2025, which declared there were no actionable grounds to prosecute any perceived confederates of Epstein—as there existed no covert “client list,” despite the fevered speculations of many on the internet. This sudden announcement by the Trump Administration triggered an avalanche of rage, which continues to roil the American political system several months later.
“Surely, then, additional co-conspirators must still be on the prowl.”
On the surface, the reaction was understandable. If the country’s premier law enforcement authorities are going to assert that more than a thousand innocent victims were “harmed” by Epstein, and “each suffered unique trauma,” it would seem to defy logic that one man could have somehow done this all on his own. Compounding the sense of injustice was a widespread assumption that the staggering number of “victims” must have been children. Surely, then, additional co-conspirators must still be on the prowl, evading accountability for their monumental “trafficking” crimes. And surely, the impunity they’ve enjoyed could be only made possible by the connivance of fellow depraved elites.
This compulsion to find someone other than Epstein to blame, investigate, convict, and imprison is what gave rise several years earlier to the prosecution of Maxwell. Thought to be Epstein’s sordid and indispensable “madame” in his prolific “trafficking” operation, Maxwell was arrested in July 2020 and found guilty in December 2021; she is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence. When it came time to put her on trial, despite the enormous number of alleged victims that were theoretically available to testify, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (led by Maurene Comey) settled on just four: Annie Farmer, Anouska De Georgiou, Carolyn Andriano, and Nadia Bjorlin.
As the trial proceeded in fall 2021, star witnesses Annie and Anouska were ruled by the presiding judge, Alison Nathan, to have endured no “illegal sexual activity.” The jurors were thereby instructed that neither woman’s claims of sexual victimization could be used to convict Maxwell. Curiously, in summer 2025, the two women reunited for an episode of Anouska’s upstart podcast, entitled “Empowered Exchange.” There, Annie confided that when she’d been initially approached by prosecutors to serve as a witness, she couldn’t help but find the request “confusing,” since she’d always assumed there must be many more victims who suffered far graver abuse than she did. (Annie’s claims of sexual abuse included unwelcome hand-holding.)
Nonetheless, Annie decided to testify on behalf of these other presumed victims, who for some reason were not available. Anouska agreed with the sentiment, recalling that out of the “hundreds of victims” she too had always assumed were out there, she “never thought that [she] would be chosen.” Possibly because she initiated consensual communications with Epstein well into her 30s, and even sent him racy photographs of herself while he was incarcerated in Florida. She also submitted an entry for Epstein’s infamous “Birthday Book” in 2003, replete with a “collection of breast photos” for his enjoyment. Anouska is described in the bawdy book as one of Epstein’s many (adult) “girlfriends.” But when all was said and done, both women did indeed testify at the 2021 Maxwell trial, and both went on to receive multi-million dollar payouts from settlement funds that became available after Epstein’s death. Finally, both appeared as “trafficking survivors” last month at the press conference in front of the US Capitol.
Carolyn Andriano, another of the witnesses the government called to testify, died of an apparent drug overdose in 2023. Two years before, on the stand, she had disclosed she was schizophrenic. She heard voices in her head warning that her children were at risk of being abducted by sex traffickers. Prosecutors nonetheless maintained that Andriano’s recollections from 20 years prior were credible enough to convict Maxwell beyond a reasonable doubt. (The jury was persuaded.) And although Andriano had been tasked to furnish evidence that could incriminate Maxwell in various sex trafficking offenses, there was only one person she ever accused of “trafficking” in clear, unambiguous terms. Indeed, to the extent that Andriano claimed she had ever been “trafficked” by anyone, it was by none other than Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the most influential and visible Epstein victim, poignantly hailed at the DC press conference as an “American Hero.”
If anyone is responsible for the most lurid and scandalizing elements of the “Epstein mythology” that continue to animate the public imagination—a child sex-trafficking ring of unfathomable proportions, aided and abetted by Maxwell, in which legions of rich and powerful men were implicated, having been filmed in compromising sexual predicaments by Epstein, and then blackmailed, perhaps at the direction of unknown intelligence agencies—these notions all originated with Giuffre. But curiously, she was not among the witnesses the government chose to summon at Maxwell’s trial. Her absence might be partly explained by the fact that another key witness, Carolyn Andriano, identified Giuffre as the person by whom she had been “trafficked.”
“I don’t think Virginia deserves anything less than what Maxwell is getting,” Carolyn said. “Because she trafficked me … I don't think she deserves any compensation. I don’t think she was coerced into doing anything.” According to Andriano, it was Virginia who drove her to Epstein’s house in Palm Beach, she said, and then once they arrived, escorted her upstairs to Epstein’s massage room. “Virginia had taken off her clothes and she asked me if I would be comfortable taking off mine,” Andriano said. She obliged, and it soon transpired that she was watching Virginia and Epstein engage in consensual sex. Andriano received $300 cash for the visit, despite engaging in no sexual activity of her own that day, and ended up returning to Epstein’s house “over 100” times. After first being “trafficked” by Virginia, you might say, she began trafficking herself. Maxwell, for her part, stridently denies that she ever met or even saw Carolyn.
The final witness at the Maxwell trial was Nadia Bjorlin, a soap opera actress on “Days of Our Lives.” Her testimony was perhaps the least deficient of the four witnesses, despite admissions of false statements, changing stories, mismatched dates, and a lack of corroborating evidence for her blockbuster allegation that she had been lured as a child into wild sex orgies with Maxwell. The government was somehow never able to identify the other alleged orgy participants, but the defense identified two, and both refuted that such orgies ever took place. Maxwell insists she had nothing to do with facilitating any of these purported sex acts, and had only ever observed Nadia in the presence of her mother.
As a 41-year-old professional actress, Nadia was permitted by Judge Nathan to testify under the fake name “Jane”—just as Anouska De Georgiou was permitted to testify as “Kate,” despite having already used her real name in media interviews and news conferences. Carolyn was permitted to use only her first name for the ostensible purpose of preserving anonymity, though she immediately waived this anonymity after the trial, and started unveiling her full name to tabloid newspaper journalists. These judicial extensions of anonymity—Sixth Amendment be damned— conveyed to jurors that the government’s hand-picked witnesses should be viewed as “victims,” before any verdict had been rendered. Why else would the court need to protect them with such extraordinary measures? On the strength of this evidentiary record, Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty of “trafficking.”
It wasn’t just any run-of-the-mill “trafficking” for which Maxwell was convicted. It was “an international sex-trafficking operation,” orchestrated by “the world’s most infamous sexual predator,” who “abused thousands of women and girls for decades.” That’s how Bradley Edwards and David Boies described it in the latest round of litigation they have filed, on October 15. Their targets this time? Bank of America and the Bank of New York.
As we can see, the continuation of the boundless concept-creep associated with “trafficking” is a lucrative prospect. It can also be stretched to increasingly absurd extremes: Donald Trump posted on September 2 that he decided to bomb a small boat off the coast of Venezuela in order to fight “sex trafficking.” Pam Bondi, before she became Attorney General, was able to capitalize on the Anti-Trafficking boom times by collecting $115,000 per month for her PR consulting firm to advise the Qatari government on “trafficking prevention”—a topic she was believed to have special expertise in. “Of course, the Human Trafficking has always been so important to me,” Bondi said during a recent podcast interview.
But most telling, perhaps, is one particular semantic shift. Take a look around, and you’ll find that just about anything which might have once been called “prostitution” is now described as “trafficking.” As recently as 2009, some of the preliminary litigation brought against Epstein had alleged that he procured his teenage victims for “prostitution services.” Today, it would be unthinkable to characterize any behavior of an “Epstein survivor” as prostitution. This would be instantly denounced as victim-shaming, and compounding their trauma. The only permissible frame has become “trafficking.” Indeed, one of Epstein’s defense attorneys, Reid Weingarten, briefly tried to rehearse a version of this an argument in pre-trial motions after Epstein was federally re-arrested in July 2019; Weingarten accused prosecutors of essentially “redoing the same conduct that was investigated 10 years ago and calling it, instead of prostitution, calling it sex trafficking. We think that is the heart of everything, and that will be the centerpiece of our defense, at least legally.” Epstein died before Weingarten got an opportunity to test this defense.
“It’s astonishing the extent to which the Anti-Trafficking Industry has been immunized from scrutiny.”
As a political matter, it’s astonishing the extent to which the Anti-Trafficking Industry has been immunized from scrutiny. This is largely due to the strange ideological convergence on which the industry rests. In the late 1990s, the Southern Baptist Convention and National Association of Evangelicals lobbied for passage of the Trafficking Victim Protection Act—the legislative scaffolding of the modern Anti-Trafficking colossus. Lobbying alongside them were Gloria Steinem, Hillary Clinton, and the National Organization for Women.
A similar dynamic persists today. While the Trump Administration has generally evinced a well-founded skepticism of the government-backed NGO sector, brimming as it is with bizarre left-liberal indulgences, a great deal of public largesse continues to flow mostly unhindered to the Anti-Trafficking NGOs. A federally-subsidized conference held September 23 in Hartford, CT examined trafficking “through a trauma-informed, equity-driven lens.” A fundraising gala held on May 8 at Donald Trump’s golf club in Doral, Fla. boasted of “bringing together leading voices from across the anti-trafficking movement,” and Trump’s endorsed candidate for governor, Byron Donalds, declared “we need collective action—government, nonprofits, communities—to defeat trafficking.” An elaborate re-investigation of the entire Epstein affair is well underway in the House Oversight Committee, and its Republican chairman, James Comer, has said the committee’s work will optimally result in legislative solutions to “improve federal efforts to combat sex trafficking.” Sustaining this industry requires a constant conveyor of fresh “trafficking” revelations. If those tales cannot be found, they will be manufactured.