Here's the context "...plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein...".
Richard is talking about her being coerced -- to pretend that she was willing.
The witch hunt is taking the context (Richard presumes she was unwilling) and then twisting his words to make it appear that he said she was willing.
The moral dilemma is: is someone willing if they pretend to be willing? Let's guess she was paid to pretend to be willing (why else was she doing it?). Perhaps she was paid to be a honeypot (entrap someone by pretending to be interested in sex - it is at least plausible). I think we can all agree that the girl probably would prefer not to have to screw some random. Of course, any underage sex is breaking the law, and ignorance won't help you (in court or the media).
Richard's words could have been better, but the quotes in the public media (and you repeating the two key words) are clearly twisting his meaning 180 degrees.
> This is not the fault of the media looking for witches to hunt.
The media is at fault when it radically perverts meanings just to get eyeballs. Why pretend that there can only be one single canonical root cause?
> This is the result of a massively intelligent man deciding to spit into the political wind.
It seems obvious enough to me that Richard is definitely not "massively intelligent" when it comes to social nuance. We all have our strengths and weaknesses: many engineers cut themselves using their blunt EQ knives.
