The Questions We Ask When We Already Know the Answer

After Hillary Clinton told House Republicans for hours that she never met Jeffrey Epstein, never visited his properties, and knew nothing of his crimes, the questions shifted. UFOs. Pizzagate—a debunked conspiracy theory about a pizza restaurant basement that doesn't exist. The deposition had become something else entirely.

Meanwhile, critical witnesses went unquestioned. Republicans didn't show up to depose Les Wexner, the billionaire retailer with documented ties to Epstein. The only prior question any Republican asked of previous witnesses concerned not Epstein but a conspiracy theory about Clinton and Russia. A photograph appearing to show Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick with Epstein quietly disappeared from the Justice Department's public database.

The Epstein victims—those Clinton said she felt "so sorry for"—remain on the periphery of a process ostensibly conducted in their name. Their grief becomes ammunition in a different war.

This pattern reveals something uncomfortable: we can use the language of justice while performing its opposite. We can demand accountability while ensuring the mechanisms of accountability malfunction. The prophet Amos warned against those who "trample on the needy" while maintaining elaborate religious observances—the form without the substance.

What would it look like to actually want answers? To show up for every deposition, not just the politically useful ones? To resist the dopamine of viral photos and conspiracy theories in favor of the harder work of following evidence?

The questions we ask reveal what we're really seeking. And sometimes, what we're seeking isn't truth at all.