Why Libertarians Should Be Wary About Releasing the Epstein Files
The federal government shouldn't use its police power to gather personal, embarrassing information on people and then blast it out on social media.
It is understandable why so many libertarians have wanted to release the Epstein files and why the two members of Congress who led the charge have considerable right/left libertarian tendencies: Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.). Libertarians rightly distrust the federal government and reasonably fear that federal authorities may have covered up Jeffrey Epstein's crimes in order to conceal the involvement of political leaders in both major parties. If you're someone who thinks Democrats and Republicans are corrupt and that both the Clintons and President Donald Trump may have something to hide, you are very likely some kind of libertarian.
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From this perspective, the release of millions of pages of federal investigative documents, emails, videos, and photos relating to Epstein may seem like a vital act of government transparency and accountability.
The public has a right to know if the government protected Epstein, who killed himself in prison (under suspicious circumstances) after finally being rearrested for sexual misconduct with underage girls. We certainly want to know if Epstein was the ringleader of a cabal of pedophiles and worked to procure underage girls for powerful men to abuse. Other than Ghislaine Maxwell, no one else was charged with the sex trafficking of girls in connection with Epstein, which was a serious failing of the justice system if there's evidence that's been concealed.
But that's a lot of ifs. Massie and Khanna cajoled their colleagues into finally supporting the Epstein Files Transparency Act and shamed Trump into signing it, giving us access to the government's files on Epstein and his associates. These files are interesting and reveal that a number of notable individuals remained friendly with Epstein up until right before his death. But they do not provide any evidence whatsoever that Epstein had a network of elite pedophiles.
Moreover, Khanna's attempt to name names of individuals involved in sex crimes immediately went horribly awry: Four of the people he named on the House floor have nothing to do with Epstein. Succumbing to theatrics, Khanna also brought an alleged Epstein victim to the State of the Union address in order to call attention to the numerous women who have claimed that there are Epstein coconspirators who have eluded justice. But that woman, Haley Robson, has herself confessed to having helped bring girls to Epstein. This makes one wonder: What are we doing here, exactly?
This is just completely insane. Haley Robson may have been abused by Epstein, but she was subsequently paid by him to find underage girls. No one made her do this, it was not some desperate situation where it was them or her. She relished this role, and the money she made. https://t.co/Q39TV5gfUl
— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) February 24, 2026
Yet Khanna and Massie keep touting the release of the Epstein files as a major success, not because the files have identified pedophiles who escaped justice, but because friends of Epstein are coming in for deserved humiliation and professional consequences. These include Larry Summers, who resigned yesterday as a professor at Harvard University, and World Economic Forum CEO Børge Brende, who has stepped down. Massie celebrated these outcomes on X, and Khanna asked if Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who also had ties to Epstein, will be next.
You're welcome. It's not a hoax. https://t.co/OpoB2DTVSN
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) February 25, 2026
Is Lutnick next? https://t.co/EzRIzMHHbv
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) February 26, 2026
It may be perfectly appropriate for these men to lose their jobs due to their bad judgment. Private organizations such as Harvard are within their rights to want to disassociate from Epstein's friends. If an intrepid reporter or Harvard whistleblower had come across this information and shared it publicly, and Summers' reputation suffered as a result, well, that's life.
But we should be careful here to note that this is not what happened. Summers' reputation is suffering because the government collected a bunch of information on Summers—vis-à-vis his emails with Epstein—and has now released it to the public.
I think libertarians ought to be more worried about the precedent this sets!
Collecting Dirt
Let's take a brief stroll down memory lane and recall the cancel culture crisis of the 2010s and early 2020s. You probably know the types of stories to which I refer: Area man loses job and/or educational opportunities after old tweets resurface (i.e., after a mendacious journalist, activist, or rival digs up dirt). For a while, this was happening constantly. Many people, including many libertarian-minded people, tended to think this was bad. Examples of cancel culture occurred frequently enough and were noxious enough that I was able to make it one of my main areas of editorial coverage for several years.
But here's the thing: In the vast majority of those cases, the cancellation did not involve government action. It was private individuals using legitimately obtained information to get vengeance for perceived slights: old tweets, text messages, videos of conversations, etc. We tended to think this was a worrying trend, even if, in some of the cases, the underlying behavior was far from ideal.
The wave of cancellations in the wake of the Epstein files release, though, is based on information that the government obtained and leaked to the public. That should worry libertarians a great deal. Obviously, we would not support the federal government using its police power to gather personal, embarrassing information on people and then blast it out on social media. Certainly government-organized cancel campaigns that rely on damaging data that only the feds are capable of gathering should alarm us even more greatly than garden-variety cancellation.
This is even more concerning given the terrifying new powers that the federal government wishes to claim for itself with respect to technology companies. The feds are trying to coerce social media platforms into sharing data with law enforcement more willingly. What if these data can then easily be shared with the entire world for subsequent humiliation?
I can't say it any better than this New York Times column by Daniel Richman:
When materials collected in a criminal investigation get released in bulk for public consumption, the justification for the coercive and privacy-invading tools we give investigators gets a lot weaker. Institutions claiming to protect user or customer privacy might be more likely to resist valid uses of these tools. Witnesses who would otherwise speak to investigators about sensitive matters might start to rethink whether they want to provide grist for internet searches.
We have to reckon with what happens when a huge investigative haul—with its swirling mix of gossip, casual association and possible criminal misconduct—is opened up for public viewing. The justice system should never be the only means of holding people accountable. The power of shame can be a good thing, and some reputations deserve to be tarnished. But informal accountability processes can easily slide into misuse of unfiltered source material.
This is why it feels wrong to me for my fellow libertarians to celebrate the ousters of Summers and others. The proximate cause of these cancellations was the government compiling reports on private citizens and then releasing them to the frenzied media. What could go wrong?
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