Ankush Khardori is a senior writer for POLITICO Magazine and a former federal prosecutor at the Department of Justice. His column, Rules of Law, offers an unvarnished look at national legal affairs and the political dimensions of the law at a moment when the two are inextricably linked.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche informed Trump in May that his name appeared multiple times in the Epstein files that the Department of Justice and the FBI reviewed.

The president gets low marks for his handling of the scandal. But polls suggest other issues are driving the popularity dip.