There’s a particular sound the internet makes when a late-night host goes for the throat: a split-second gasp, then a flood. Jimmy Fallon managed to trigger it with one of those jokes that arrive wearing a clown nose and leave with blood on their shoes.
“According to the White House, it’s ‘not a crime to party’ with Epstein, just like it’s ‘not a crime to have brunch with Jeffrey Dahmer,’” Jimmy Fallon said on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. It’s an intentionally ugly comparison, a moral cudgel dressed up as a punchline, and it spread fast because it takes the slipperiest defense in politics—technically, we didn’t break the law—and yanks it into the realm of basic human disgust.
According to the White House, it’s “not a crime to party” with Epstein, just like it’s “not a crime to have brunch with Jeffrey Dahmer” 😭 #FallonTonight pic.twitter.com/xR4W7QuTZ0
— The Tonight Show (@FallonTonight) February 4, 2026
Some people laughed. Plenty didn’t. But hardly anyone shrugged.
Jimmy Fallon’s line works because it’s rude in a way that feels earned. “Not a crime” is a legal boundary, not a character reference, and it’s been used for years as a kind of rhetorical deodorant: yes, we were around bad people; no, it doesn’t mean anything; please stop asking. Fallon’s move is to say—fine, then let’s stress-test that logic with a name that makes everyone recoil. Jeffrey Dahmer is not a policy argument; he’s a cultural synonym for horror.
That’s also why the joke is risky. Morality-by-metaphor is powerful, but it can flatten complexity, and the Epstein story is nothing if not a tangle: victims, enablers, opportunists, and a long trail of influential people who floated in and out of Epstein’s orbit for reasons that range from transactional to social to murky. A punchline doesn’t have room for gradations. It goes straight for the nerve.
But the nerve was already exposed. Jimmy Fallon just pressed it.
The joke hit as the Justice Department released what it described as the final tranche of Epstein documents—about three million pages—saying it had now made public all files related to Epstein. NPR reported that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said a “meticulous” process was used to protect victims’ privacy, while the DOJ said it reviewed around six million documents overall and withheld about half for reasons including child s—-l abuse material, privilege, duplication, or irrelevance.
The release itself has been criticized for its messiness. NPR described the material as lacking organization and context, often heavily redacted, and noted instances where victims’ names and photos appeared unredacted even as Epstein’s own name was redacted in some texts. If you were trying to design a document drop guaranteed to inflame distrust and fuel amateur sleuthing, you’d struggle to beat that.
And then there’s the political heat. PBS reported that President Donald Trump’s name appears “hundreds of times” in the latest release, while also noting Trump has not been accused of specific wrongdoing connected to Epstein and has said he cut ties long ago. PBS also emphasized that some references stem from news articles Epstein shared, and that the files contain unverified allegations that the Justice Department is required by law to release, even if unsubstantiated.
.@RepTedLieu: “Donald Trump is in the Epstein files thousands & thousands of times. In those files, there’s highly disturbing allegations of Donald Trump raping children, of Donald Trump threatening to kill children.” pic.twitter.com/67BE1eMpBd
— CSPAN (@cspan) February 3, 2026
The documents also illuminate contact between Epstein and prominent figures in Trump’s orbit. PBS reported friendly exchanges involving former adviser Steve Bannon, as well as emails involving Elon Musk and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, while stressing that mention in the files is not proof of illegal activity and that no direct evidence of s-x trafficking or abuse by those individuals had emerged from the tranche.
So, yes, Jimmy Fallon’s joke is “just comedy.” But it’s comedy aimed squarely at the country’s growing allergy to elite impunity—an allergy that gets worse every time the public is told, again, to accept proximity as meaningless.
The danger is the backlash swing. If the takeaway becomes “everybody partied, so everybody’s guilty,” cynicism wins, and victims lose—because cynicism is a great shield for people who don’t want consequences. That’s the viral storm underneath the viral clip: America drowning in pages, starving for clarity, and watching a joke do what institutions still haven’t managed—make the whole thing feel real for five uncomfortable seconds.
