Pam Bondi’s Jeffrey Epstein stunt reveals populism’s limits
The attorney general’s promised revelations about Jeffrey Epstein’s associations were a dud.
Donald Trump is president for a second time because Americans have lost trust in institutions, and he has stacked his administration with populist bomb-throwers.
Now they’re in a position to actually prove the claims of elite perfidy they have indulged and encouraged.
But what if they can’t?
Witness the embarrassing spectacle of the Trump Justice Department’s choreographed release of “The Epstein Files.”
Bondi asked darkly in November “why AG Garland and the Justice Department are so quiet” about Epstein.
She has teased the release of information on the case, and on Thursday the administration invited right-wing social media personalities to receive “The Epstein Files: Part 1.”
They marched out of the White House brandishing folders with that title. Finally, the truth was poised to come out!
But soon there was trouble. Despite the pageantry, it turned out the Justice Department gave the influencers largely stale information.
The populist base that was supposed to be vindicated by the release of Epstein files began to complain.
“What we were looking for was hidden from us,” said one of the influencers. “Who is subverting POTUS?” posted conservative media personality Glenn Beck. He claimed that the White House believed law enforcement had the list but was “refusing to turn it over.”
The response to the Justice Department’s theatrics apparently short of what she hoped for, Bondi released a defensive letter she sent to FBI Director Kash Patel.
In the Thursday letter, Bondi said she “was repeatedly assured by the FBI that we had received the full set of documents.”
But yesterday, she said, “I learned from a source that the FBI Field Office in New York was in possession” of thousands more pages.
She demanded that they be turned over to her by Friday morning. They weren't.
Patel had claimed a few months ago that the government was suppressing the Epstein files “because of who’s on that list.” Perhaps the FBI director can now force the deep state to cough up.
But as lawyer Ted Frank noted, a top law firm seeking compensation for Epstein’s victims for years “left no stone unturned” and had every incentive to find co-conspirators.
There are certainly many unanswered questions about Epstein’s strange career and associations.
But what is most likely happening here is that the populist media universe led on its followers with an exaggerated political tale, and the Bondi Justice Department is flailing as it tries to play along.