One word: Gallantry.
I’m Michael Smerconish in the Philly ‘burbs.
Another week, another series of humiliations for famous associates of Jeffrey Epstein.
Bill Gates apologized to staff at his philanthropic foundation. Gates said it was a mistake to associate with Epstein but that he’d done nothing illicit and had seen nothing illicit.
Former Harvard president Larry Summers will resign from his academic and faculty appointments at Harvard at the end of the academic year. Summers’ relationship with Epstein spanned years, thousands of emails and phone calls, and included soliciting Epstein’s advice on a romantic relationship.
Borge Brende, CEO and president of the World Economic Forum also resigned this week. He is also the former foreign minister of Norway. The DOJ docs reveal that Brende was in contact with Epstein until at least just months before Epstein’s death.
And then there is Bob Kerrey. The former governor of Nebraska, U.S. Senator, member of the 9/11 commission and president of The New School. Kerrey resigned from the board of a clean energy start-up after the DOJ files revealed that he’d met and corresponded with Epstein more than a decade ago when he was a university president.
Kerrey told the New York Times that he would offer no defense of his meetings with Epstein and that if he knew then what he knows now, he would not have said yes to a meeting.
In addition to serving as a governor and senator, Kerrey is a Medal of Honor recipient for his conduct as a Navy Seal in the Vietnam War.
Like many other Medal of Honor citations, Kerrey’s begins with the words: “for conspicuous gallantry…”
The citation describes Kerrey suffering “massive injuries” from a grenade but nevertheless leading his men while in a near-unconscious state.
Gallantry has two meanings: Courageous behavior especially in battle… and attention or respect given by men to women. No one will ever use the word “gallant” to describe Jeffrey Epstein… and respect for women needs to be the guiding light of our Epstein analysis.
But guilt by association is not an appropriate standard… Guilt by deeds needs to be our standard.
We’ve entered a phase that some predicted when Congress first mandated the release of millions of pages of sensitive information within 30 days of passage.
Last July, Benjamin Wittes, the editor in chief of Lawfare argued that the Epstein files should not be released:
“There are good reasons, a lot of them, why federal law enforcement doesn’t do investigations in public and why it doesn’t release the fruits of its investigative efforts as a matter of course. The case of a serial predator whose misconduct touched a thousand victims and hundreds of other people is no time to throw away rules and civil liberties protections that are designed to prevent law enforcement from being an instrument of indiscriminate shaming and public exposure.”
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/Article/No–Don-t-release-the-epstein-files
In December, Ian Millhiser, senior correspondent at Vox, similarly noted:
“The justice department almost never discloses information it collected on a criminal suspect outside of a criminal judicial proceeding, and for very good reasons. Revealing such information can endanger victims or other witnesses. And it denies due process to individuals who May be innocent — and who Will never receive a trial — even though their names are prominently featured in the DOJ’s records.”
https://www.vox.com/policy/469461/doj-case-against-releasing-jeffrey-epstein-files
And just last week, Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor wrote in the New York Times that the release of the Epstein files is a sign of institutional failure, but also a cause for concern:
“The release of the files is also cause for concern because so much of the raw investigative material in them — untold layers of hearsay, unverified accusations and vague circumstantial connections — ought not be released for the public to pick over.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/opinion/epstein-files-justice-department.html
With each day’s search of the Epstein files and the resulting cancellation of anyone whose name appears, we are losing any semblance of a presumption of innocence.
Instead, we’re now witnessing a repeat of the mistake made by FBI director James Comey when in 2016, he took the unprecedented step of holding a press conference to announce he was not indicting Hillary Clinton. He further muddled the picture by saying she’d been “extremely careless” causing legal observers to wonder how that differed from the “gross negligence” that charges required.
The point is… our tradition is one of indicting or saying nothing.
And speaking of Hillary Clinton, of all the names in the Epstein files, why would the GOP-led house oversight committee choose to depose her, where there has been zero evidence of any impropriety? Clearly only to deflect from attention that might otherwise find President Trump.
But he too is entitled to the presumption of innocence.
Several media outlets including CNN are reporting that that the Epstein files contain an unverified accusation against Trump from a woman who was a minor in the 1980’s and that a certain number of those documents are missing. Trump denies all claims of wrongdoing. And this is one of a number of uncorroborated accusations contained in the files about well-known men.
Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, those missing files should be released.
But as we rummage the files we should remember…
That knowing Jeffrey Epstein by itself is not a crime, and each person forced to exit public life for no good reason deprives our nation of their continued contributions. The urge to cancel should be tempered by an individualized and objective assessment of what each person knew and did. America learned that lesson from the McCarthy Era. It’s no less true today.
Michael A. Smerconish
