With the recent resignation of President Katalin Novák of Hungary (she is the second president of the Third Hungarian Republic to resign from office), we have additional proof of something we have already known: any type of scandal in any relation to child abuse will certainly doom a politican’s career in a well functioning democracy.
Or will it?
The world’s oldest continuously existing democracy—and the most prominent democracy on the world stage—the United States has also seen its fair share of paedophilia scandals in recent years.
Bill Clinton on Epstein Island?
This may be the oddest story of them all. Millionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein used to own a private island in the US Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. It was known by a peculiar nickname among the locals—Paedophile Island.
That is because it was a major hub for sex trafficking underage girls, as per the criminal complaint of the attorney general of the US Virgin Islands states. Epstein died under mysterious circumstances while being held captive awaiting trial in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, New York. However, his prime conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 for trafficking underage girls.
Also, in 2008, Epstein did plead guilty to procuring a girl for prostitution below age 18. Hence, while the charges against him per se regarding his private island remain to be just allegations, he is a convicted sex offender who abused underage girls. He also got a ridiculously light sentence for his crime, 13 months in prison, which he served in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade. After some time served, he was even allowed to leave detention for 12 hours a day, six days a week for ‘work release’.
Former US President Bill Clinton flew on Eptein’s private jet a total of 26 times between 2001 and 2003,
as the flight logs reveal.
He has also hosted Epstein in the White House 17 times while he was serving as president. An alleged victim of Eptein’s told investigators that the sex offender told her that President Clinton was known for liking young girls.
And in the oddest twist of them all, a painting depicting President Clinton in a blue dress was found in one of Epstein’s properties. However, Clinton has denied all knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and has not been charged with any illegal activity either.
Former President Donald Trump also has known associations with Epstein. He flew on his private jet seven times between 1993 and 1997. However, he never visited the notorious island, and no victim has indicated any wrongdoing during the investigations in the over 900-page court document released to the public by a US federal judge in January, unlike Clinton. Also, it was his Justice Department that arrested Epstein again in June 2019.
Bill Clinton does not seem to be affected by this scandal
—in fact, he is reportedly going on a fundraising tour with Former President Barack Obama in an effort to help President Biden’s reelection campaign.
Anthony Weiner and Roy Moore
Anthony Weiner was a Democratic congressman, representing New York’s 9th District since 1999. His scandal started as an extramarital affair—something our previous subject, President Clinton also knows a few things about—with the added embarrassment of explicit photos also being leaked of the congressman, who also had an unfortunate last name to go with the affair.
However, all this ended up being something mch more serious: one of Weiner’s ‘digital mistresses,’ women he would exchange sexual photographs and text messages with, was a 15-year-old girl.
The scandal originally broke in May 2011. After about a month of denial, Weiner resigned in June 2011. His seat was taken by a Republican challenger in a special election called for in September 2011. However, it was not until September 2016 that claims of him ‘sexting’ an underage girl started to be reported in the press. In May 2017, Weiner pleaded guilty to one count of transferring obscene material to a minor (thus escaping child porn charges for the images he allegedly received from the victim) and was sentenced to 21 months in prison. Weiner’s wife, who divorced him after the incident, Huma Abedin, served as vice chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign (here’s another appearance by the Clintons).
Roy Moore was the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court between 2001 and 2003, then between 2012 and 2017. In 2017, he decided to run for the US Senate on the Republican side, to fill the seat left by Jeff Sessions after being appointed as US Attorney General by President Donald Trump.
At the start of his campaign, nine women came forward and accused him of sexual misconduct, two of them claiming he abused them when they were 14 and 16, respectively. 16 is the age of consent in Alabama, and Moore did not deny pursuing girls as young as 16 as an adult when the question was posed to him by conservative radio host Sean Hannity.
Roy Moore has never been charged with, let alone convicted of, any sexual crimes.
However, for his technically lawful but still immoral conduct of going after young teenage girls as a grown adult, the voters of Alabama did end up punishing him. He lost his Senate race in the deep red state of Alabama (the state voted for Donald Trump in 2016 by a 28-point margin) to Doug Jones from the Democratic Party. However, Republicans ended up winning back the seat in 2020—but not with the disgraced Moore.
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