The Epstein files reveal the only time Jeffrey Epstein faced consequences was when Xbox banned him

In what might just be the cruelest irony of the Jeffrey Epstein saga, we’ve learned that the man who spent decades evading accountability for his unspeakable crimes finally met his match in December 2013. And no, it wasn’t the FBI or the courts. It happened on Xbox Live, when the convicted sex offender was banned from the Microsoft live-service platform permenantly.

The emails uncovered in Friday’s massive dump (including 3 million new files) are almost too absurd to be real. From Bill Gates contracting an STI to Elon Musk asking Jeffrey to invite him to his island, and even more damning evidence that he and Donald Trump had much closer ties than previously assumed, the internet is in no shortage of material to scrutinize for the foreseeable future.

But among the stranger revelations is that Microsoft permanently suspended Jeffrey Epstein’s Xbox Live account. The first notification Epstein received cited the usual ban reasons: harassment, threats, and abuse of other players. If the man is willing to commit such heinous crimes against humanity and human decency in real life, one can only dread to think what he’s capable of in a Grand Theft Auto lobby.

A second email also reveals the actual reason. Microsoft apparently partnered with the New York Attorney General’s office in 2012 (via PC Gamer) to purge registered sex offenders from online gaming platforms. Epstein had been on that registry since his 2008 conviction.

The documents don’t reveal whether Epstein was an actual gamer or just had the console lying around for… other sinister purposes. A 2014 email shows him asking “do we have an Xbox 360 Kinect?” while a 2016 message references buying an Xbox as a birthday present for a boy.

The more we learn about the Epstein saga, the more our faith in the justice system evaporates. It’s becoming harder and harder to pretend that the system isn’t fundamentally broken, and it seems that one way or another, we’re forced to reckon with humanity’s bottomless capacity to look the other way.

But hey, while nobody important besides Jeffrey and his assistant Ghislaine Maxwell have been prosecuted, at least Xbox took a stand. It’s a punchline so dark that I’m not sure what to make of any of these developments anymore, but at a surface level, it looks like if you want accountability in America, all you need do is hope someone violates the Xbox Live (currently referred to as just the Xbox network) terms of service.