Is the Epstein Files Frenzy Turning into Trial by PDF?

A s Los Angeles gets ready to host the world for the next Olympics, its mayor, Karen Bass, wants to sideline the man in charge. Bass recently announced that she believes Casey Wasserman, the founder and CEO of a successful sports marketing and talent management agency bearing his name, should resign as chairman of the LA28 Olympic Organizing Committee. Her statement followed the Justice Department’s latest release of documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case, which revealed a 23-year-old salacious email exchange between Wasserman and Ghislaine Maxwell.

The mayor’s call highlights the problem with the congressionally mandated disclosure. Without providing context, the government released millions of pages online, much of it containing information not remotely connected to criminal activity. Inevitably, much of the public has conflated gossip, proximity, and bad judgment with illegality. The document dump itself functioned as a guilty verdict.

To be sure, Wasserman’s emails are tawdry and humiliating. And he’s not a sympathetic figure, having been through tabloid-level controversies before. But the question isn’t whether you approve of the philandering of a married rich guy. Most people don’t. The question is whether the government should indiscriminately disclose mountains of private data collected in criminal investigations that might destroy the reputations of people who did nothing deserving of punishment. Whatever one thinks of Wasserman, the principle at stake is larger than one flawed figure.

So far, the Epstein documents don’t show that Wasserman took part in, facilitated, or even knew about any sexual abuse. They show something far more mundane: In 2003, a newly married Hollywood hotshot behaved stereotypically when he thought no one was looking. Wasserman says his only interaction with Epstein was even earlier. In 2002, he and his wife flew to Africa on Epstein’s plane as part of a humanitarian trip organized by the Clinton Foundation. Evidence of Epstein’s depravity, and Maxwell’s role in it, didn’t emerge until years later. Serious law enforcement investigations began in 2005. Turning that trip and lewd email chain into pseudo-proof of Wasserman’s complicity is moral grandstanding, not thoughtful judgment.

Within days of the latest document release, clients including Abby Wambach, Orville Peck, and Chappell Roan severed ties with Wasserman’s agency. Wasserman hired an investment bank to sell his company. This is not a mild reprimand. It is the dismantling of a career and business, triggered by the government’s release of private correspondence that evidences nothing but Wasserman’s character.

Meanwhile, the LA28 board did what you’re supposed to do: investigate the situation. It’s decision to keep Wasserman signals that the board members saw no unfixable ethical breach. Mayor Bass can disagree, of course, but her call for Wasserman to step down broadcasts a dangerous principle: that the mere appearance of long-ago social contact, viewed in hindsight, suffices to bar someone from public leadership for life. That’s a remarkably unforgiving standard coming from a mayor who has faced calls to resign over her mishandling of the LA wildfires of January 2025, her reportedly asking for alterations to the Palisades Fire after-action report, and the city’s homelessness debacle.

Of course, if Wasserman becomes too much of a distraction, the LA28 board may have to let him go despite its conclusions about his behavior. CNN reports that the U.S. and International Olympic Committees are having “back-channel conversations about the future of the 2028 LA Olympics and Wasserman’s role.”

The DOJ released over 3 million pages of material. Officials boasted that they made limited redactions and ensured that “notable” people were not shielded. That sounds virtuous but empowers trial by PDF, with every email, flight manifest, and offhand joke available for viral outrage. Transparency is vital when it exposes how power shields predators and institutions fail victims. It becomes dangerous when the release of decades-old messages invites the public to assume the worst simply because names are now searchable.

Defenders of the release argue that the public can distinguish between misconduct and gossip and that anyone with nothing to hide has nothing to fear. The reaction to Wasserman proves the first claim absurd. The second claim ignores how reputations work. Crowds are good at outrage; terrible at nuance. At a time when brands, teams, and artists are terrified of social media blowback, their safest course is to sever ties with business partners at the first hint of controversy. That isn’t discernment; it’s panic or moral posturing.

A functioning, liberal society should distinguish between evidence that someone participated in unacceptable behavior and evidence that someone exercised lousy judgment in associating with a person whose crimes weren’t yet known. None of this is meant to downplay what Epstein did or to suggest that being in his orbit should never trigger tough questions. It should. For some of the names that appear in those files, the disclosure has exposed horrifying evil that had been allowed to escape scrutiny. But this result could have been achieved without publicly releasing all the files, an action that imposed unfair costs on those not connected to, or even aware of, Epstein’s sickening behavior.

The public has every right, indeed an obligation, to demand accountability for predators and their enablers. What it doesn’t have is an unlimited mandate to sift through decades-old private correspondence, stripped of context, and proclaim guilt by association. In the absence of evidence that he helped or knew about Epstein’s crimes, Wasserman’s emails with Maxwell concern him, his family, and his conscience. They are none of our business.