by Patrick Lawrence, The Unz Review:
Eleven days ago, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi hyped her office’s imminent release of files related to the apparently sprawling empire of vice that Jeffrey Epstein ran for many years — a scandal that has percolated at or just below public awareness for over a decade.
What followed Bondi’s considerable drum roll was 200 pages of nothing new. Amid her escalating embarrassment as her document release flopped, Bondi cited an F.B.I. whistleblower to claim that she had been misled by the agency’s New York field office.
The whistleblower asserted that the New York office had kept thousands of other Epstein-related documents from her. Bondi then vowed to obtain the hidden cache and fire those who had withheld them in defiance of her order.
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Now there is more. On Monday Bondi announced triumphantly on Fox Newsthat thousands of previously unreleased documents and other forms of evidence pertinent to the Epstein affair have at last been delivered to her office at the Justice Department.
At the same time, she admitted that these new files will be redacted before they are made public — for reasons including, she said a little ominously, reasons of “national security.”
What Went on Here?
It is important to consider this bizarre turn of events as more than internecine bureaucratic warfare. We may be looking at an honest attempt by the Trump administration to bring the Epstein case to light as part of its cleanup of the deeply corrupt F.B.I..
But we may instead be looking at the limits of the Trump regime’s commitment to disclosure and transparency.
Did Bondi run headlong into the still-resistant Deep State, undiminished in its determination to stonewall Trump and his people just as it did during his first term? Is President Trump now on notice — along with the rest of us — that the same organs of covert power that launched Russiagate against Trump all those years ago will now hold out, countering every order Trump or his senior officials issue?
So it seems. But what emerges from these recent events is a blurry picture. There appears to be a good chance that Trump and his people have concluded that there is a fine line between attacking the Deep State and going along with it.
To turn this messy affair another way, was all this a PR stunt gone wrong due to incompetence at the top of the Justice Department, saved at the last moment by a whistleblower? If Bondi knew the first round of documents was a 200–page nothingburger, why did she hype their disclosure during a national TV spot the night before their publication?
Why not complain that she had been given scraps, preparing the public for what was to come? Did she not yet know enough about the Epstein case to realize that these documents had been public for years? Or was she intentionally deceptive for some other reason?
A Mere Power Struggle?
It is possible Trump and his circle are using the Epstein affair to wrench control from the innards of the institutions that once opposed him — not for the sake of justice or transparency, but simply to exert administrative and bureaucratic authority.
Bondi’s acknowledgement to Hannity that any Epstein-related documents judged to compromise “national security” will be sanitized is a flashing yellow light of the kind that should blink whenever we hear invocations of “national security.”
It may turn out to be that Trump and his cabinet are committed, after all, to protecting — irony of ironies — the reputation of the intelligence apparatus, along with a wide array of plutocrats, and America’s greatest ally, according to Trump, Bondi, and the rest of the cabinet: Israel.
Let us consider: What issues of “national security” would require redaction in regard to a deceased sex-trafficker or his underage victims, unless our government or close allies had been involved in said sex-trafficking ring?
Sean Hannity’s interview with Bondi on Fox News appeared angled toward preparing the audience for heavy redactions, as he repeatedly returned to the topic. Indeed, he went so far as to introduce the prospect of national security redactions—a thought Bondi readily embraced. Green room rehearsals, anyone?
I do not, I will say at this point, like the smell of all this.
Bondi’s Monday night announcement that she had obtained new evidence coincided with the resignation of James Dennehy, head of the F.B.I.’s New York outpost. Dennehy’s resignation letter indicated he was forced to resign, but it of course included no suggestion that this was related to a coverup of pertinent Epstein files. It is nonetheless hard to miss the apparent implications of Dennehy’s timing.
