The Department of Justice has until the end of the day on Friday to release its files pertaining to infamous pedophile sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein. To mark the occasion, former DOJ attorney Ankush Khardori detailed the five rules to keep in mind while engaging with the materials, including one of the most important questions: "Where's Trump?"
Khardori released his explainer via Politico on Friday morning, ahead of the frenzy likely to ensue should the DOJ fulfill its legal obligation, despite early protests from President Donald Trump. To lead off, he suggested that everyday readers might want to consider not reading the actual materials themselves, and leave the effort of sorting through them to professionals.
"If you’re reading this, you might be eager to dive in and rummage around for salacious nuggets of information when they land, but have you ever considered simply not doing that?" Khardori wrote, later adding, "your best bet is to trust serious reporters and media outlets with a track record of reporting deeply and responsibly on Epstein. They are far better positioned than most to put the information in its proper context (both temporal and substantive) and to accurately integrate it into the voluminous information that we already have about this grim saga."
Secondly, Khardori urged readers to critically examine the documents. "It's important to understand your factual sources, their biases and their limitations," he explained, noting that just because the files contain statements from certain figures doesn't make those statements true.
On a similar note, Khardori stressed that just because the files might reveal people engaging in "sleazy behavior," these individuals are not necessarily therefore implicated in "criminal" conduct.
"There is a difference between being liable for criminal conduct and engaging in embarrassing, even morally offensive conduct," Khardori explained.
Khardori also warned readers to be skeptical of the early releases of information, suggesting that the Trump administration could easily "manipulate the flow of information," potentially to "[frontload] early releases with material that is particularly harmful to Trump’s political opposition."
"The administration could also produce seemingly damaging information about people early on, only to release exculpatory material later in the process — after much of the damage will already have been done — and could selectively withhold material on the grounds that it would impede an ongoing investigation or harm national security," he explained.
Above all, for his final rule, Khardori urged readers to "ask yourself: Where's Trump?" Given the administration's widely criticized handling of the Epstein files to date, any further efforts to shield the president from the fallout could be a sign of a wider effort to hide or manipulate certain information.
"If material pertaining to Trump is not produced early, there is reason to believe that the Trump administration is engaged in a (continuing) cover-up of information that would be harmful to the president," Khardori wrote. "That is reason alone to be cautious about jumping to conclusions about other political and media figures. If we are going to render judgments about the proximity of prominent figures to Epstein, the place to start is with the most powerful person in the world."