Instead, Epstein was a pimp, the girls were members of the world's oldest profession and the rich friends were little more than dirty old men.
It's a technicality but it doesn't technically qualify as pedophilia, even though some of the girls that Maxwell and Epstein were texting with were as young as 14 years old.
Except the law is nothing BUT technicalities. You can drive 70 on a straight country road with visibility literally for miles, and you're breaking the law if stopped for speeding in a 55 mph zone. But, you're likely not doing anything immoral or unethical if you're not endangering anyone.
As far as social taboos go, society doesn't judge speeding to be a taboo. Governments and highway departments do, but it's with littlte justification when you compare roads that are identical but marked by as much as 20 mph variance.
The same holds true for sexual contact with underaged partners. Lots of members of society go to extraordinary lengths to pretend their 14-18 year old youth are not whoring around, even though they are. When it's a peer, they do what they can as adults to control it. When it's an adult, they try to exaggerate the conditions so as to make it more socially egregious and one-sided. It's true for straights. It's true for gays.
Although I think Paul was using a phrase to mimic some of society's view, "dirty old men" is also a relic of Victorian morality to some degree, as it was acceptable before Victoria's time to pair young and old, and it increasingly is today in most societies. There is clearly no evidence that either Epstein, Trump, or the majority of the celebrities called into question are sexually aroused by pre-pubescent partners. Young does not equal children in sexual meaning.
Branding an opportunistic rich John as a pedophile is an intentional act of propaganda. Those who DO believe it is the same are the same folks who think gays may "technically" not be pedophiles, but since "gay" has lost its damning effects, they are happy to groups LGBTQ people with pedophiles for effect.
Epstein was an upscale pimp. Not newsworthy as far as it being something exceptional.
Trump was a known pussy-grabber by his own mouth, and his sanctimonious brigade had no problem with that as long as he kept those liberals from killing babies in abortion clinics, and blamed foreign devils for America's self-inflicted wounds.
The clamor over Epstein is deserved since it is the piss that Trump shot into the wind in the first place, but revelations, even film of him in some Moscow brothel, would never result in impeachment. Even the mentally impaired know he has no shame, and all his underlings will later campaign on the lies that anything indicting his character was created by Comey, Hillary, Obama, or Satan.
But, he's not a pedophile. Biden was not a pedophile. Both have been smeared by the opposing camp with that very lie because "racist" isn't sticking any more, so new bullets must be found.
That's the truth.