IMHO it's more like a disclaimer, if you hide it people will sooner or later still find out either if they do research (it was public), or randomly later. That then creates a situation of a "breach of trust" that "they where tricked to work with a evil person" etc.

So given that it anyway comes out sooner or later it's better to be upfront about it as that can create a feeling of trust. It can create misconceptions like "if he where unserious he would have hidden that he works for Epstein" etc.

At the same time it acts as filter, people with a upstanding moral compass will directly say no and you don't wast time on trying to recruit them.

Lastly for people which some but not robust morals iff you can convince them to work with you and they start having doubts you now have the argument that "you told them upfront about the issue and they where okay with it, and bailing not would make them look like a very unreliable business partner affecting their carrier beyond this situation". To be clear I'm not saying that this is "true", but that this argument presented carefully in the right way at the right time can be effective to manipulate people _even if not true_.