Note that she recently lost a defamation lawsuit she initiated against someone who claimed (with evidence) that he didn't abuse her¹. I looked into the court docs a few years ago and it looked like she was lying about some details to sell a book, and the accused was likely innocent.

So probably something complex going on.

Frankly my suspicion re: Epstein is that he was in fact funded by one or more intelligence agencies to get blackmail videos, did in fact abuse girls himself, and mostly failed at the task of getting others to incriminate themselves because the people he tried to target said no. This fits with the outcome: basically no prosecutions for anyone else, because there was hardly anyone else actually guilty of anything. Equally, it'd explain his suicide/murder: the intelligence agency/agencies involved really don't want the truth getting out, as it'd be yet another massive scandal of taxpayer money wasted doing something both evil and ineffective.