Ankush Khardori is a lawyer and legal analyst who writes theOpen Filenewsletter. He spent several years as a prosecutor at the US Justice Department prosecuting financial fraud and other white-collar crimes.
In April, a 25-year-old man named Edward Juul Rod-Larsendied by suicidein Oslo. You have probably never heard of him, but his death appears to have been the first — and, one hopes, the last — caused by the US government’s release of the Epstein files.
Rod-Larsen was the son ofNorwegian diplomatswho had large financial dealings with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. There were no allegations of wrongdoing against the young man himself, but he had drawn the attention ofNorwegian media outlets,social media sleuths, andinternational tabloids, which reported that Epstein’s will had left himmillions of dollars, that Epstein had helped him apply for coveted internships, and — of particular note to some — that his parentsmay have takenhim to Epstein’s island as a child. He died several days after Norwegian and French policeannounceda joint investigation into Epstein’s questionable financial relationship with his parents, whose lawyerssharply criticizedthe public scrutiny and sordid innuendo that had enveloped him in his final months.
The death of Rod-Larsen complicates the record of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was supposed to expose men who had engaged in child sex trafficking with Epstein and whose crimes had been ignored by the Justice Department under both the first Trump and Biden administrations. One of the law’s cosponsors, Representative Ro Khanna of California, said the release of the files would expose a “rape island, where rich and powerful men were abusing young girls with impunity.” The other cosponsor, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, accused those who opposed the law’s passage last year of “running cover foran underage sex trafficking ring.” Advocates for the law also claimed that releasing the files would promote broader objectives of accountability and transparency.
It has been nine months since the Justice Department completed its release of the evidence, but the benefits have been much less compelling than advertised, and it’s time to admit an unpopular fact: The law was a bad idea, and it should not have been passed.
The release of the Epstein files has produced gripping revelations about howelites consort with one another, but a key claim made by lawmakers and other advocates for disclosure — that the Justice Department’s files would expose a hidden child sex trafficking ring — has not been substantiated. And the law has not otherwise provided the justice or the clarity that was promised. Since January,many peoplehave been criticized and in some casesprofessionally punishedfor associating with Epstein after he was convicted in 2008 of procuring a minor for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution. But virtually all of those relationships werealready knownfrom public reporting. The fallout seems to have had more to do with public and political pressure than with releasing new information.
The costs — most of which have been obscured from public view or, like the death of Rod-Larsen, ignored by lawmakers and advocates — have significantly outweighed the benefits.
The disclosure broke with long-established criminal procedures that generally require the Justice Department to keep its investigative files confidential unless the government presents that material as evidence in a criminal case. At that point, the defendant has the opportunity to test the government’s case and cross-examine witnesses before an impartial judge and jury pursuant to the rules of evidence. The victims never get full access to the government’s investigative files. The disclosurelawwas designed to balance the cross-cutting interests of the victims, the government, and the public, and to treat crime victims equally across cases, regardless of differences in public attention or interest.
The Epstein law ultimately required the diversion of an extraordinary amount of Justice Department resources, including weeks of document review by hundreds of Justice Department prosecutors whose work on countless active federal criminal investigations was slowed or entirely halted during this period. (I contacted Khanna and Massie for interviews about the costs and benefits of the law; Khanna declined, and Massie’s office did not respond.)
This is not the standard of justice we aspire to in this country. The presumption of innocence has been turned on its head. We have countenanced an ethos of guilt by association. And we have allowed a free-for-all driven by the indiscriminate release of millions of unvetted pages of documents collected by investigators, including emails, photos, and summaries of witness interviews containingsalacious allegationsthat may or may not be true.
In the tragic case of Rod-Larsen, no one actually knows why Epstein made the unusual bequest, but some peoplespeculatedon social media that perhaps his parents had taken him to Epstein’s island as a child to be molested and that perhaps the money in the will had something to do with that. If these grave and unsubstantiated allegations were true, that would be a horror, of course. But we have considerably more evidence for another kind of victimization: Rod-Larsen looks like an innocent bystander whose life was cut short as the result of an ill-conceived law.
We should start with a simple but crucial point: It has been more than half a year since the Justice Departmentcompleted its release, but no one in Congressor the mediahascredibly identified any other menwho participated in the child sex trafficking masterminded by Epstein and his coconspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. This surprises many people, but it makes some sense given the relevant facts and law.
According tothe government’s allegationsagainst Epstein andthe proof at Maxwell’s trial, their abuse of minors ended sometime around 2005.That is whenpolice in Palm Beach, Fla., began investigating Epstein, after the family of a 14-year-old girl accused him of sexually abusing her. In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges of solicitation of prostitution and procuring a minor for prostitution. He continued to abuse women, but he turned his focus to those in theirlate teens and early 20s.
As a legal matter, it is substantially more difficult to prove federal charges of sex trafficking involving adults. When the case involves minors, prosecutors must establish only that the victims engaged in sex for money. But when the alleged victims are adults, prosecutors must also show that they did not consent to the transaction — that they were instead induced to do so by force, fraud, or coercion.
Epstein may very well have been aware of this distinction and for precisely this reason changed his behavior following his conviction. This also helps to explain why the Justice Department never charged Epstein or Maxwell with any misconduct occurring after 2005 and why the people who associated with Epstein in the years after his convictioncan maintainthat they did not know the full extent of his crimes.
