Pam Bondi's DOJ & Kash Patel's FBI: Trust Us, Jeffrey Epstein Was TOTALLY Not Blackmailing All Those Rich & Powerful People He Had Dirt On
A memo about the Epstein files issued by the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation strains credulity—even for MAGA loyalists
So much for PROMISES MADE, PROMISES KEPT.
On July 7, Pam Bondi’s DOJ and Kash Patel’s FBI released an undated, unsigned two-page memo effectively exonerating Jeffrey Epstein—the notorious sex trafficker, Ponzi schemer, fake financier, ephebophilic predator, international spy, and formerly, for the better part of a decade and a half, Donald Trump BFF—of blackmail. Axios was the first to report the story.
In an “exhaustive review of investigative holdings relating to Jeffrey Epstein,” in which the Bureau “conducted digital searches of its databases, hard drives, and network drives as well as physical searches of squad areas, locked cabinets, desks, closets, and other areas where responsive material may have been stored” and unearthed “a significant amount of material, including more than 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence” showing “images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors, and over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography,” the FBI, despite moving heaven and earth to review every last jpeg in its painstaking investigation, found “no incriminating ‘client list’” and “no credible evidence…that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.”
And the kicker: “No further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”
Welp, I guess that settles that!
What Pam Bondi and Kash Patel are telling us is that, for two decades, Epstein recruited minors, groomed them into sex slaves, forced them to service rich and prominent individuals, secretly filmed the proceedings, and then, with 300 gigabytes of some of the most valuable kompromat ever collected, did…absolutely nothing with it.
And we’re supposed to take their word for it. Without them producing a shred of evidence. Evidence which Bondi, in particular, had been promising for months to deliver. And which many in MAGA nation had been awaiting with bated breath.
The Epstein files are “sitting on my desk right now to review,” Bondi told FoxNews host John Roberts back in February. “That’s been a directive by President Trump.” Yesterday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary—who is sometimes confused with Bondi because both are fake blondes with crosses around their necks and shitty taste in clothes who lie a lot—clarified that remark, explaining to a heated Pete Doocy of FoxNews that when the AG said the “client list” was “sitting on my desk right now to review,” what she really meant was “the entirety of all of the paperwork, all of the paper in relation to Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes. That’s what the Attorney General was referring to.” I don’t need to point out that while a “client list” is at most a few pages long, and thus could fit neatly next to Bondi’s name plaque and family photos, perhaps tucked under a mug of pens, there is no desk in the entire DOJ facility that could accommodate “the entirety of all of the paperwork, all of the paper” related to Jeffrey Epstein.
What was sitting on Pam Bondi’s desk? Or was that statement, like most of the garbage spewing from her hateful mouth, just a big fat lie?
Since his 2019 death—which Bondi and Patel have also assured us, in the same memo, was absolutely, unquestionably, and beyond all doubt a suicide—Epstein has taken on almost mythical status in the popular culture. But let’s not forget that he was a real person. For a reminder on just what that serial rapist and sexual predator ne plus ultra spent much of his adult life doing, here’s an excerpt from the indictment of Ghislaine Maxwell—literally Epstein’s partner in crime, who was sentenced to 240 months in prison in 2022 after being found guilty of conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to transport minors to participate in illegal sex acts, transporting a minor to participate in illegal sex acts, sex trafficking conspiracy, and sex trafficking of a minor:
From at least 1994, up to and including in or about 2004, GHISLAINE MAXWELL assisted, facilitated, and participated in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of minor girls by, among other things, helping Epstein to recruit, groom, and ultimately abuse victims known to MAXWELL and Epstein to be under the age of 18. The victims were as young as 14 years old when they were groomed and abused by MAXWELL and Epstein, both of whom knew that their victims were in fact minors. As a part and in furtherance of their scheme to abuse minor victims, MAXWELL and Epstein enticed and caused minor victims to travel to Epstein’s residences in different states, which MAXWELL knew and intended would result in their grooming for and subjection to sexual abuse. . . .
In the earlier phase of the conspiracy, from at least approximately 1994 through approximately 2001, MAXWELL and Epstein identified vulnerable girls, typically from single-mother households and difficult financial circumstances. This earlier phase required the defendant and Epstein to identify one girl at a time to target for grooming and abuse. In the later phase, from approximately 2001 until at least approximately 2004, MAXWELL and Epstein enticed and recruited, and caused to be enticed and recruited, minor girls to visit Epstein’s Palm Beach Residence to engage in sex acts with Epstein, after which Epstein, MAXWELL, or another employee of Epstein’s would give the victims hundreds of dollars in cash. MAXWELL and Epstein encouraged one or more of those victims to travel with Epstein with the intention that the victim engage in sex acts with Epstein. Moreover, and in order to maintain and increase his supply of victims, MAXWELL and Epstein also paid certain victims to recruit additional girls to be similarly abused by Epstein. In this way, MAXWELL and Epstein created a network of underage victims for Epstein to sexually exploit.
Maxwell was found guilty of this. And is, rightly, rotting away in prison because of it.
Although they’d known each other since at least 1987, Epstein first entered Trump’s orbit in 1990, when he bought his residence in Palm Beach, Florida—a hop-skip-and-jump from Mar-a-Lago. (Later, he would move into Les Wexner’s luxe Upper East Side mansion, a fifteen-minute stroll up Fifth Avenue from Trump Tower.) By 1992, Epstein and Trump were chummy enough to be partying together. The infamous footage of the two sleazebags palling around, laughing and dancing, was taken that year at Trump’s Palm Beach club:
Indeed, one of Epstein’s victims—the late Virginia Guiffre—was recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago, where she was working as a spa attendant. That was in 2000, two full Bill Clinton presidential terms after the above-mentioned footage—the same year that Trump was flying on Epstein’s “Lolita Express” private jet, the same year that Melanie Trump was posing provocatively for British GQ, the same year that Epstein, Donald and Melania Trump, and Prince Andrew were photographed together at a tennis match at Mar-a-Lago. The two fun-loving couples—Donald & Melania & Jeffrey & Ghislaine—socialized together all through the early 2000s.
Trump is on the record about this. Who can forget Landan Thomas Jr.’s infamous profile of Epstein in New York magazine, “International Moneyman of Mystery,” which contains a choice paragraph that seemed perfectly innocuous back in 2002, when it ran:
Epstein likes to tell people that he’s a loner, a man who’s never touched alcohol or drugs, and one whose nightlife is far from energetic. And yet if you talk to Donald Trump, a different Epstein emerges. “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump booms from a speakerphone. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
By Trump’s own account, the Trump-Epstein bromance would last for 17 years—until November of 2004, when the two Humbert Humberts quarreled over a palatial Palm Beach estate, Maison de l’Amitié, that both of them wanted to buy. No doubt Epstein felt confident he would secure the highest bid; after all, before the place was sold to the elder care magnate Abe Gosman, Maison de l’Amitié had been owned by Epstein’s longtime benefactor, the aforementioned Victoria’s Secret mogul Les Wexner. But it was Donald who scored the property, which he flipped to a Russian oligarch a few years later, for well above market value, at a hefty profit. That real estate row effectively ended the Trump-Epstein friendship.
Look again at the date range in the Maxwell indictment: 1994 through 2004. Twenty oh-four is the same year the two adjudicated sexual predators had their falling out. Huh. Funny, that.
As LB explained a few weeks ago on The Five 8, there is a subset of MAGA cultists, which includes a number of prominent rightwing influencers, who are obsessed with the Epstein files. They believe that Donald was only hanging out with Epstein for all that time because he was a double agent, working undercover, secretly gathering information on him—you know, so he could #SaveTheChildren.
This is, perhaps, not as stupid as it sounds. The first known tip to the Palm Beach police about Epstein’s illicit dalliances with underage girls was received in November of 2004, right after the two monsters had their Palm Beach spat about Maison de l’Amitié. It may well be that Donald (or, perhaps, “John Barron”) was the anonymous tipster—and that Epstein knew this, or at least suspected it, and that’s why he stopped talking to him. What the MAGA cultists cannot explain is why, if it was indeed Donald who ratted Jeffrey out, it took Trump over a decade and a half to sound the alarm—or why he only did so when Epstein pissed him off by trying to outbid him for a piece of choice real estate.
“Not as stupid as it sounds,” you see, is not the same as “not stupid.”
Here’s the deal: Donald Trump was close friends with Jeffrey Epstein for 17 years. He is listed a dozen times in Epstein’s “black book.” He called Epstein on the phone constantly. He took frequent rides on Epstein’s private jet. He accompanied Epstein to parties where there were a lot of young girls around and not many other dudes. He boasted to a reporter that Epstein “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” He allowed his own 15-year-old daughter to work for a modeling agency run by his friend John Casablancas, another notorious creep, who, in 1982, at age 42, “dated” the model Stephanie Seymour—when she was fourteen years old. He and the missus socialized often with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Trump was pals with Epstein from the late 80s until the end of 2004. That means that, for the duration of the period cited in Maxwell’s indictment, 1994-2004, Trump and Epstein, two adjudicated rapists, were bosom buddies. Are we to believe that Donald spent a decade and a half hanging out with this guy—so much so that Epstein would later tell the reporter Michael Wolff that “Donald Trump was my closest friend”—but had no idea what his wingman was up to? If not, why did he make the remark about Jeffrey liking them “on the younger side?” What would it say about Trump, if he could maintain that close of a friendship to a renowned ephebophile, and not put two and two together? Isn’t it far more likely that Donald spent all that time with Jeffrey because they were into the same perverted shit?
Pam Bondi and Kash Patel say otherwise. There is no “client list,” there aren’t any real “Epstein files,” and all those gigabytes of pornographic images and video footage were, presumably, of underage girls…alone.
About Bondi and Patel. The pair were friendly before assuming their respective roles, so much so that at his swearing-in ceremony, Patel acknowledged Bondi and remarked on how “freaking cool” it was that they now had these big important jobs. Oh, and Bondi and Patel are both stakeholders in Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), also known as DJT Media, the Trump-owned corporation FPOTUS formed after leaving office in 2021. That seems kind of significant, no?
The indefatigable folks at Accountable.us broke this down, back in March:
Attorney General Pam Bondi owns more than 106,250 shares of DJT, a stake worth approximately $2 million as of March 13, 2025. Bondi has vowed to divest her shares within 90 days of her confirmation. As of March 13, 2025, she has not filed any paperwork indicating divestiture from these assets.
and
FBI Director Kash Patel has also been involved with TMTG. In January 2025, well after he filed his financial disclosures, TMTG “gifted” Patel $826,000 worth of shares. The timing is curious considering it came nearly a month after he filed his financial disclosures and came on the exact same day he filed his ethics agreement, which made no mention of any investment in TMTG. The shares are “restricted stock units” which will vest in installments from March 2025 to March 2027, meaning that Patel could be receiving payments in the form of stock shares from the president’s company while serving as FBI director….TMTG reported to the SEC that Patel has planned to step away from the company and forfeit future compensation and stock awards and he filed a document claiming “no securities are beneficially owned.” It appears that Patel is taking steps to divest his stake in Trump Media but he has not filed the relevant paperwork with the Office of Government Ethics as of March 26, 2025. As a result, the status of his divestment is unclear.
That means that both Bondi and Patel were enriched by a Donald Trump venture well before being nominated to lead the DOJ and the FBI—the two federal entities responsible for investigating and prosecuting crimes. That’s a Kremlin-sized conflict of interest. Far be it for me to suggest that the shares in TMTG given to these two obsequious loyalists represented a sort of “pre-bribe,” paid out to ensure that their respective agencies would look the other way about the Russia stuff, the crypto stuff, the emoluments stuff, and, especially, the Epstein stuff. I would never suggest that! But it certainly looks that way.
Like, there aren’t that many big shareholders in TMTG. Why else would Donald pick these two sycophants, of all the qualified people in the country, if not because he owned them before they walked in the door? Either way, there’s no question that both the sitting Attorney General and the sitting FBI Director were (and continue to be, if they have not yet fully divested) materially enriched—directly! significantly!—by the sitting President. Or the golfing President, as it were.
If there’s footage on Epstein’s hard drives of Trump raping girls—and to be clear, I’m not saying there is; I’m saying if such incriminating evidence exists—do we really believe that Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, who have raked in millions of dollars through “investments” in TMTG and other Trump-adjacent deals, are going to say so?
Did you know that Bondi sold $1-5 million in TMTG shares right before Trump made his big tariff announcement on April 2? And that the stock price plummeted right after?
What do they say in Britain? In for a penny, in for a pound.
Jeffrey Epstein was tight with presidents and princes and prime ministers, Silicon Valley titans and Harvard attorneys and MIT professors, business executives and underwear magnates and iconic magicians. The guy cultivated relationships with rich, famous, powerful people, many of whom were alleged by his victims to be perpetrators. If those allegations are true—and does anyone really believe they aren’t?—that means that Epstein almost certainly possessed footage of rich, famous, powerful people in flagrante delicto with the many underage girls he was trafficking.
But what Bondi and Patel would like us to believe is that this massive DOJ/FBI investigation yielded “no credible evidence…that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.”
That Epstein for many years went through the considerable trouble of setting up these illegal liaisons, covertly filming them, and keeping the footage under lock and key in order to do…nothing at all.
Even the MAGA faithful are calling bullshit:
Alex Jones: “The DOJ is running cover for the CIA and Mossad. NO ONE IS BUYING THIS!! Next the DOJ will say ‘Actually, Jeffrey Epstein never even existed.’ This is over the top sickening.”
Jack Posobiec: “When will [at]AGPamBondi be filing to unseal the Epstein files from the criminal case? We were promised everything.”
Mike Cernovich: “No one is believing the Epstein coverup, [at]realDonaldTrump. This will be part of your legacy.”
Laura Loomer: “Blondi lied. She was always lying.”
The Hodge Twins: “Trump has to fire Pam Bondi. She went on camera and told the world she has the Epstein client list on her desk. Now they say there is no list??”
Mike Flynn: “I have a lot of respect for anyone who stands up to serve our nation but when one does, you need to remember it is the American people you work for… This EPSTEIN AFFAIR is NOT going away! And an early lesson learned for everyone regarding this affair, ELITES don’t give a sh!t about children, you, or anyone for that matter. There are two standards of justice in our country. One for the elites (I include the uniparty in this club) and another standard for everyone else. Today was another brutal and stark example of the two different standards we appear to adhere to in the United States. This has to change and quickly.”
Bondi and Patel seem to have kicked over the MAGA hornets’ nest.
No credible evidence…that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.
The word “blackmailed” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that memo. Blackmail, under 18 U.S. Code § 873, means, per the law, that “whoever, under a threat of informing, or as a consideration for not informing, against any violation of any law of the United States, demands or receives any money or other valuable thing, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.” Is it technically blackmail, I wonder, if a threat is never explicitly made? I’m not an attorney, so I’m not sure. Maybe someone can ring up Alan Dershowitz and ask.
No further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.
Exhale, Bill Clinton. Wipe the sweat from your brow, Prince Andrew. Hit the Hyatt hot tub, Tom Pritzker. Make your stress disappear, David Copperfield. Rest in peace, Marvin Minksy.
The “ELITES” can sleep soundly tonight, knowing that Bondi and Patel, two mendacious MAGA loyalists who are for all intents and purposes on Trump’s payroll, are on the job—and that for as long as Donald is in the White House, the Epstein files will never see the light of day.
Or, as Trump might put it: PROMISES MADE, SECRETS KEPT.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore. Pam Bondi waves.
AS ALWAYS, Greg, you have the clear and definitive and today concise take on the subject. Thank you.
I have been thinking a lot, and by lot I mean almost constantly since I retired a couple of years ago, about the myriad of ABJECT failures by every aspect of American society with Trump. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Media, office holders, business, religious, and educational and really “leaders” of every stripe and at every level. Abject fails everywhere.
But today I am thinking about the “media” in 2015 and 2016. Just think about the hundreds (thousands?) of absolutely disqualifying and literally frightening things they could have uncovered like Epstein, or just reported so many that were in plain sight. They could EASILY have hammered him relentlessly and mercilessly(like they did Biden’s age and decline for example), BEFORE he became a true cult leader. Shame on them, and shame on almost every single one of us, from McConnell to all my Godly evangelical “leaders” like Robert Jeffress and Franklin Graham. They make me physically ill—every single one of them.
I never thought this could happen here. It has and in spades. I have ZERO doubt that Trump is 100% as guilty as Epstein, and I know he is not the only one of course.
Thanks again for your clarity and well researched and written reports!!!!! You help me hold on to some semblance of sanity in this house of mirrors.
One has to wonder how long before the orange clown pardons Ghilane. If there’s no client list… wasn’t Blondi the AG in Florida when Epstein was in jail? She knows damn well what was happening between Epstein and his clients. Thanks as always for your excellent research on this disgusting case!