Larry Summers has now become the first prominent American to be publicly disgraced for his association with Jeffrey Epstein, but he certainly won't be the last. Since the release of emails between Summers and Epstein, Summers has swiftly been disappearing from public life. He has either resigned or been kicked off many lucrative positions he held with various companies and other institutions, and he has now had to step back from his teaching position at Harvard University (after an attempt to cling to the job by admitting his shame to his students didn't go over very well). My guess is he won't be appearing on many news programs as an expert economist anymore either. But again, the fall of Summers is just the first in what will likely be a series of people who will be ostracized and shunned in public life. Because he certainly wasn't the only friend of Epstein who is in a prominent public position (and therefore has a lot to lose). [I should add, for the record, that former-Prince Andrew has also paid a steep price for what was recently revealed, but the woes of British royalty don't really interest me that much, so I consider him more of a footnote to the story here in America.]

Jeffrey Epstein had a lot of friends. He was a rich and powerful playboy who loved hobnobbing with other people who were richer and even more powerful. This is where all the speculation about a "client list" came from. But mere association with Epstein isn't enough to condemn all his friends and associates, since we won't know what sort of friendship or association anyone had with him until the rest of the Epstein files are released. Epstein was involved in philanthropic work with famous people, and it remains to be seen how close any of them were to Epstein (and his crimes) outside of such philanthropy.

It is doubtful whether anyone will be prosecuted for any crimes as a result of the files being released. The Justice Department under both a Democratic and Republican president examined them all and have yet to charge anyone, which suggests that there isn't enough actual solid evidence of lawbreaking to bring charges. Attorney General Pam Bondi even explicitly said this, earlier this year. But there are courts of law and then there is the court of public opinion -- which doesn't have the same strict evidentiary rules.

Of course, since many of Epstein's friends and associates were politicians or active in the political world, there will be a partisan edge to uncovering who was a creep and who wasn't. Summers most definitely was a creep, as his emails proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. He deserves the shame and condemnation he is now getting, for being such a sleazebag. But while this was pretty obvious, it may not be as clear-cut for others.

Of course, the biggest targets are Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. Trump was best buddies with Epstein for years, and Clinton had connections to Epstein through his charitable foundation (at the very least). Whether the Epstein files have anything in them proving anything more is an open question, not just for Trump and Clinton but for a whole raft of other prominent people.

The clock is now ticking, after Trump signed into law the bill (that passed almost unanimously through both houses of Congress) which forces the Department of Justice to fully release all the Epstein files. Within 30 days, something is going to be released. It will not be a full and unredacted copy of everything, for various reasons. In the first place, the victims' identities must be protected. The girls that were raped and abused and trafficked by Epstein (and others) deserve this protection. Secondly, anything which qualifies as "child pornography" must be either withheld or redacted (pixelated or blacked out), since releasing such material (or possessing it) would be a crime in and of itself. But while great care must be taken to shield the victims, there must also be no redactions of people who weren't victims -- Epstein's friends, in other words.

Bondi and Trump may try to get away with only partial releases of information. Trump notably called on Bondi to open investigations into prominent Democrats just before the bill was voted on in Congress. Bondi promptly obeyed (even though she had stated earlier that there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute anybody). This could give them the excuse of "well, we can't release material that is currently under investigation," but attempting to go this route may cause some serious political blowback even from within the Republican Party.

Because neither Bondi nor Trump can be trusted in any way, shape, or form, there is also the question of whether they will conspire to selectively refuse to release any documents which feature Trump's name (or perhaps just "which have incriminating or damning evidence against Trump"). So far, Trump has largely survived what has already been released, with his usual bluster about it all being "fake" or a "hoax." So maybe they'll just release everything anyway and Trump will continue his "nothing to see here, folks" schtick.

But whether there is anything shameful revealed about Trump or Clinton, there will indeed be shameful things revealed about many of Epstein's friends. When the Epstein files are fully released, it may prove to be such a massive trove of documents and/or recordings that it may take a while to dig through it all. There will likely be several stages to all of this. The most famous and most prominent names will be the first to face public shame. But there are likely to be other tiers of people (less prominent, less well-known) who will also be revealed later, after the big names hit the headlines.

All of them -- without regard to political party or anything else -- deserve exactly what Larry Summers is now experiencing. They deserve shunning. They deserve ostracization. They deserve to be "cancelled." They deserve to lose power, to lose cushy sinecure jobs, to lose public respect, and to lose any chance of ever rehabilitating their reputations.

Underage girls were raped. They were groomed and exploited and prostituted and abused by evil men and at least one evil woman. Anyone who participated in any of this abuse -- or even knew about it and just swept it under the rug -- deserves all that is coming to them. And if no proof of any of this is revealed, but proof of other sleazy behavior is revealed (such as the revelations about Larry Summers), then they deserve to be shamed for that as well.

Larry Summers was the first prominent American to be taken down because of his own words and actions. But he certainly won't be the last.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant