Attorney General Pam Bondi has struggled to explain Donald Trump’s dramatic U-turn on the Epstein files after she enraged MAGA earlier this year by declaring there was nothing left to probe or disclose.
Facing a “deluge” of Republicans prepared to break ranks to release the files, the president embarked on a major reversal this week, telling his party to vote in favor of a transparency bill that he will now sign into law.
In a bid to deflect the firestorm he has faced for most of the year, Trump also ordered Bondi to investigate Democrats who were once associated with the convicted child sex offender, including former President Bill Clinton, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and former Harvard President Larry Summers. All three have denied knowing about Epstein’s heinous crimes.
Trump’s flip-flopping on the Epstein scandal has placed the attorney general in a bind, partly because of a contentious memo her department released in July declaring that “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted” and “we did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
Asked on Wednesday what had changed, Bondi struggled to explain the dramatic reversal.
“Information that has come for, um, information. There’s new information, additional information,” she said, not explaining exactly what new information she had.
“We will continue to follow the law to investigate any leads.”
The memo was released on July 6, as Trump was under increasing pressure to fulfill a promise he’d repeatedly made to his MAGA base: to release the files. He now insists the issue is a Democratic “hoax” designed to detract from his achievements.
The memo enraged his base, with many taking aim at Bondi, particularly after she claimed in February that the files were “sitting on my desk” and then invited right-wing influencers to a White House photo-op where they received binders of documents containing information that was essentially already in the public domain.
The DOJ memo also said that a review by the department “found no basis to revisit the disclosure” of troves of material related to Epstein’s crime and “revealed no incriminating ‘client list’.”
“There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,” the memo added.
On Wednesday, however, Bondi called for victims to come forward if they had any information.
Congress has also rushed through a bill to release the files after months of refusing to do so, but when exactly that will happen remains a mystery.
The legislation calls for Bondi to release “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” held by the Justice Department, FBI, and each U.S. Attorney’s Office related to Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell within 30 days.
It also calls for files to be released that relate to individuals and entities “with known or alleged ties to the trafficking or financial networks of Jeffrey Epstein.”
But it also states that Bondi can withhold or redact documents that would jeopardize an active federal investigation or prosecution, or contain information “specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret.”
Asked multiple times on Wednesday how her department would handle releasing the files, Bondi simply repeated: “We will follow the law”.
It is not clear what this could mean for the investigation into Democrats that Trump ordered, which critics fear could be used to withhold information.
Bondi has appointed Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to lead that investigation.
As revealed in the Daily Beast’s newsletter The Swamp, Trump’s first-term attorney general Bill Barr tried to shoehorn Clayton into the Southern District of New York in 2020, as they sought to push out top prosecutor Geoffrey Berman, who happened to be circling Trump allies like Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon at the time.
When that failed, Clayton was appointed to the board of Apollo Global by Trump ally Leon Black, who was also an Epstein associate who paid the sex offender roughly $170 million, for “tax and estate planning” advice.
While Black has denied knowing anything about Epstein’s industrial-scale sex trafficking, a 2023 settlement with the U.S. Virgin Islands attorney general shows Black admitted that the money he paid Epstein was used, in part, to “fund [Epstein’s] operations.”
Clayton was eventually appointed as the top prosecutor for the Southern District of New York in April this year.
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