'[The Epstein Client List] Is Sitting on my Desk Right Now'

Pam Bondi, Attorney General of the United States, February 21, 2025: ‘[The Epstein client list] is sitting on my desk right now’

Via Mint, February 22, 2025 (emphasis added):

“Jeffrey Epstein client list is “sitting on my desk right now,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Friday, following President Donald Trump’s earlier directives ordering the release of records.

In an interview with Fox News, Bondi said she is reviewing “a lot of documents,” including the Jeffrey Epstein client list, because it was a “directive” from Trump himself.

“I’m reviewing JFK (John F Kennedy) files, MLK (Martin Luther King) files, that’s all in the process of being reviewed,” she added.

When asked if she’s seen anything that made her go, “Oh my gosh”, Bondi said, “Not yet!””

Pam Bondi, February 27, one week later: Dear FBI, where is the Epstein client list?

After promising bombshell revelations including the release of the Epstein client list — which she claimed to have “on her desk” — then delivering a nothing-burger, Bondi writes this curious letter to FBI Director Kash Patel, dated February 27:

“Before you came into office, I requested the full and complete files related to Jeffrey Epstein. In response to this request, I received approximately 200 pages of documents, which consisted primarily of flight logs, Epstein's list of contacts, and a list of victims' names and phone numbers.

I repeatedly questioned whether this was the full set of documents responsive to my request and was repeatedly assured by the FBI that we had received the full set of documents. Late yesterday; I learned from a source that the FBI Field Office in New York was in possession of thousands of pages of documents related. to the investigation and indictment of Epstein.”

To recap: One week ago, Pam Bondi had all the Epstein bombshell revelations on her desk and was prepared to drop that bombshell on the world, come hell or high water, in the interest of the much-vaunted Trump 2.0 “radical transparency.”

Now, Pam Bondi has what she knows to be a paltry sampling of the entire cache of documents and claims the FBI is hiding them from her — documents which, again, she previously claimed were on her desk.

Make it make sense, please.

The undeniable fact:

If the people in charge in Washington, who are presumably answerable to Trump, had the will, they could have procured all of the documents on Day One — or else expose who had destroyed or hidden them if that were the case — then have gone through them to redact any legitimate information like victims’ names, then have sent them out the door in a twinkle of a lamb’s tail.

Instead, we get this suspenseful gaslighting, which in no substantive way differs from the approach of the prior regime in terms of how it handled the peasants and their annoying demands to know what their government does in secret in their names with their money.

Related: Fox News Corp. Keeps Epstein-Style Blackmail Dossiers on Its On-Air Talent

Forget the H1B visa Musk vs. Bannon melodrama, which was probably way more of an internet beef than a true schism in the grand scheme of things; this might be the real first real test of just how far the MAGA base is willing to allow itself to be gaslit before it really begins to abandon its leader.

Of course, there are sycophants/grifters who will stay on the train no matter what, both in the corporate state media (the Sean Hannitys of the Old Guard) and independent media (the Benny Johnsons of the Twittersphere). Members of this archetype are in it for the cash and the clout, free of any principles or ethics that might constrain them from running cover for the Big Guy and/or various special interests that influence said Big Guy. Politics has always been riddled with such characters and always will be (at least until the machine overlords render human actors obsolete). They should rightfully be forever ignored, both because they are disingenuous and because they never have anything interesting to say.

But for the people who voted Trump in 2025 because they wanted a wrecking ball taken to the entrenched and abusive Deep State, playing fast and loose with the Epstein file release has to be some kind of red line.

Related: John McCain's Widow: 'We All Knew What Epstein Was Doing'

Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.

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