Attorney General Pam Bondi’s disastrous handling of the Epstein files has added a new screwup to its list with the unmasking of an undercover FBI agent.
The error came to light after CNN published footage from the latest dump of files, a 2009 video of an FBI undercover operation aimed at securing Epstein’s so-called “black book” of contacts. The news outlet reports that the Justice Department reached out after the video went up to ask for the undercover agent’s face to be obscured, acknowledging that it had failed to conceal the agent’s identity before releasing the files.
The video has since been removed from the DOJ website. The Daily Beast has contacted the FBI and the DOJ for comment.
The video showed Epstein’s former Palm Beach house manager, Alfredo Rodriguez, attempting to sell a list he said contained the names and phone numbers of Epstein’s associates—including prominent figures and alleged victims—to the undercover FBI operative.
Rodriguez told the agent, “You will see a lot of important people here,” and claimed the book included contact information for underage girls.
According to court records, the video was recorded two years after the FBI formally demanded that Rodriguez turn over any Epstein-related materials. Instead, prosecutors said, he tried to sell the book for $50,000.
In the recording, Rodriguez also alleged that Ghislaine Maxwell—Epstein’s longtime associate who is now serving a prison sentence—maintained a database of girls that included nude photographs. “The teenagers, they had braces,” Rodriguez said in the video, though he offered no proof that such a database existed.
The footage ended with the undercover operative handing Rodriguez a bag of cash.
Rodriguez was later arrested for failing to surrender the book as evidence. He claimed it was his personal property and described it as an “insurance policy,” telling authorities he feared Epstein might make him “disappear,” according to court documents. He ultimately pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Rodriguez died in 2014.
The latest disclosure adds to a long list of blunders uncovered in the Justice Department’s handling of the files.
The department has faced intense criticism both for exposing victims’ names in some documents and, conversely, for heavily blacking out information tied to individuals who may have assisted Epstein — prompting accusations that its redaction process has been inconsistent and flawed.
A Justice Department spokesperson previously said all completely blacked-out names in the documents belong to victims or FBI personnel and other law enforcement officials. “In many instances, as it has been well documented publicly, those who were originally victims became participants and co-conspirators,” the official said. “We did not redact any names of men, only female victims.”
Justice Department leaders acknowledged mistakes in the massive Epstein document release but said errors were quickly corrected.
“Mistakes were made by – you have really hard-working lawyers that worked for the past 60 days. Think about this though: you’re talking about pieces of paper that stack from the ground to two Eiffel Towers,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Monday on Fox News. “The minute that a victim or their lawyer reached out to us since Friday, we immediately dealt with it and pulled it down.”
Bondi added during a congressional hearing on Wednesday: “If any man’s name was redacted, that should not have been, we will, of course, unredact it. If a victim’s name was unredacted, please bring it to us and we will redact it.”
She continued: “We were given 30 days to review and redact and unredact millions of pages of documents, our error rate is very low.”
The post Bondi Accidentally Outed Undercover FBI Agent in Epstein Files Blunder appeared first on The Daily Beast.
