We’ve all been there: You spend time carefully putting together a surprise gift for a loved one, but when they open it up, you can tell they don’t really love it. That’s basically what happened to Attorney General Pam Bondi last week — but in this case, the recipient was the Trump White House and MAGA conspiracy theorists, and the present was previously released information on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, repackaged into a binder.
Donald Trump’s new attorney general managed to anger people across the political spectrum last week when she teased the release of new files related to the Epstein investigation on Fox News, only to hand out binders full of previously released documents to far-right influencers, including Mike Cernovich, Liz Wheeler, Jack Posobiec, Rogan O’Handley (a.k.a. DC Draino), and Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik.
So what was Bondi thinking? On Tuesday, ABC News reported that neither the dozen-plus MAGA influencers nor the senior White House officials who organized the February 27 event were informed of Bondi’s plans to distribute the Epstein files, as she thought it would be a welcome surprise:
Ahead of the Justice Department’s public release, Bondi directed her staff to compile binders of the materials to distribute to the influencers at the event, sources said. She also instructed her team not to inform White House officials of the plan, according to multiple sources, apparently thinking the surprise would be well received inside the West Wing.
The White House had organized the event a week earlier to engage influential pro-Trump voices who the president credits with aiding his 2024 campaign. According to multiple sources, the agenda never included distributing Epstein-related materials.
It seems the viral images of the influencers brandishing the binders — which were marked “Declassified,” though they did not contain official government declassification markings — were not part of her plan. Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel unexpectedly handed out the documents at the meeting, then press cameras that were set up to cover British prime minister Keir Starmer’s visit happened to capture the influencers leaving the White House.
Trump does love made-for-TV theatrics, but usually he’s the one berating a foreign leader or holding the map-doctoring Sharpie. ABC reports that the incident left White House officials scrambling to smooth things over with some of the president’s most loyal supporters (though Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denied that):
White House staff moved quickly to try and contain the fallout, privately reaching out to influencers who were critical of Bondi and the move online, according to sources.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, responding to a request for comment from ABC News, said, “Everyone is working together as one unified team at the direction of President Trump. Any notion to the contrary is completely false.”
Either way, it doesn’t seem as though Trump himself is too angry about the botched stunt. He gave Bondi and Patel a shout-out during his address to Congress on Tuesday, as he claimed that “our justice system has been turned upside down by radical-left lunatics” and gestured at Democrats in the room.
And Bondi has managed to deflect some of the blame onto the FBI’s New York office. After the binders stunt flopped, she accused the office of withholding information about the Epstein investigation without providing evidence to back up that claim. The head of the office, James Dennehy, was forced to submit his resignation the following day. Dennehy said he “was not given a reason for this decision.” But in addition to clashing with Bondi over the Epstein files, he had angered the Trump administration by publicly supporting bureau leaders who resisted pressure to turn over the names of people who investigated the Capitol riot.
In a Monday interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Bondi claimed that the FBI has now turned over a “truckload” of Epstein files, which the bureau is reviewing “as fast as we can.”
“It’s a new day,” she said. “It’s a new administration, and everything’s going to come out to the public. The public has the right to know. Americans have a right to know.”
So while Bondi’s big surprise may have flopped, all’s well that ends well. It looks as if she isn’t facing any serious consequences, a well-respected FBI official who annoyed the Trump administration has been let go for unclear reasons, and the search for the (possibly nonexistent) Epstein “client list” continues.
More on Politics
- Trump to ‘Take Good Care’ of Veterans by Firing 80,000 VA Employees
- Republicans Vow to Censure Al Green for ‘Shameful’ Trump Heckling
- Why Does Trump Want Greenland? His Imperialistic Threats, Explained.
