WashingtonDespite Attorney General Pam Bondit’s assurances that no more documents pertaining to the affluent financier’s sex trafficking investigation would be released to the public, the Justice Department admitted on Monday that Jeffrey Epstein did not keep a client list, which had heightened the expectations of conspiracy theorists and conservative influencers.
In a Fox News interview earlier this year, Bondi implied that such a document was on my desk for review. The admission that the well-connected Epstein did not have a list of clients to whom underage girls were trafficked represents a public retraction of a theory that the Trump administration had assisted in promoting.
The government stated in a memo that it was not disclosing more evidence detectives had gathered, despite releasing video from inside a New York jail supposed to conclusively establish Epstein committed suicide. For weeks, Bondi had hinted that additional information would be made public. “It’s a new administration and everything is going to come out to the public,” she remarked at one point, following the initial document dump, saying that her failure to deliver on her promises infuriated President Donald Trump’s supporters.
Conservative online personalities have harshly criticized Bondi in response to that episode, in which far-right influencers were invited to the White House in February and given binders labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1 and Declassified” that contained documents that were essentially already in the public domain.
Bondi claimed that after the initial release failed, authorities were going over a truckload of previously suppressed evidence that the FBI had turned over. “Sadly, these people don’t believe in transparency, but I think more unfortunately, I think a lot of them don’t believe in honesty,” she said in a March TV appearance, claiming the Biden administration sat on these documents and did nothing with them.
However, the Justice Department concluded that no more disclosure would be appropriate or necessary following a months-long evaluation of the government’s available material, according to the document. According to the police, only a small portion of the data would have been made public had Epstein been tried since a judge had sealed off a large portion of it to protect the victims.
Fighting child exploitation and providing victims with justice are among our top priorities, the document states. “Perpetuating unfounded theories about Epstein serves neither of those ends.”
Although the FBI and Justice Department logos were on the two-page memo, no official signed it.
Conservatives who are looking for evidence of a government cover-up of Epstein’s death and activities were incensed at the department’s stance on Monday. Jack Posobiec, a far-right figure, wrote: We were all informed that there will be more. that solutions were available and will be given. It’s amazing how badly this Epstein problem has been handled. It didn’t have to be, either.
According to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the DOJ will then claim that Jeffrey Epstein never existed, which he described as excessively disgusting. In an attempt to poke fun of Bondi for claiming that the client list doesn’t exist despite implying months prior that it was on her desk, Elon Musk posted a number of pictures of a clown doing makeup.
When Bondi was asked in a Fox News interview if the department would make such a document public, the client list controversy started.
In response, she said, “I’m currently reviewing it on my desk.”
Bondi was referring to the whole Epstein case files, according to Justice Department spokesperson Chad Gilmartin and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday.
Images of Epstein, pictures and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors, and over 10,000 “downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography” are among the evidence that the Justice Department said Monday it has in its possession and will not be making public.
The document doesn’t say how or when the tapes were uncovered, who or what they show, or whether they were discovered when investigators searched through their evidence or if the government had known for a while that they were in their possession.
Following Bondi’s citation of tens of thousands of films that she said showed Epstein with minors or engaging in child porn, the Associated Press published an article last week regarding unresolved problems around potential video evidence.
Several participants in Epstein’s and socialite former lover Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal proceedings told AP that they had not seen or heard of a wealth of recordings similar to those Bondi had mentioned. Additionally, neither Epstein nor Maxwell were charged with possessing child sex abuse material, despite the fact that it would have been simpler for prosecutors to prove that than the sex trafficking charges they were facing. Indictments and detention documents also do not claim the presence of video recordings.
Although the Epstein estate’s discovery of videos and images that might be considered child sex abuse material was mentioned by the AP in a filing in a civil lawsuit, attorneys involved in that case claimed that a protective order prevented them from learning the specifics of that evidence, and the Justice Department did not reply to a comprehensive list of questions posed by AP regarding the videos Bondi was referring to.
Weeks after being arrested on sex trafficking allegations, Epstein committed suicide and was discovered dead in his jail cell in August 2019, preventing a trial.
Although conspiracy theorists have continued to contest that judgment, the department’s statement that Epstein committed suicide is scarcely a revelation.
For example, in November 2019, then-Attorney General William Barr told the AP that he was confident Epstein’s death was a suicide after reviewing surveillance footage showing no one entered the area where Epstein was confined the night he died.
In more recent television and podcast interviews, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino have maintained that there is ample proof Epstein committed suicide.
