Outline:
US President Donald Trump has supported Attorney General Pam Bondi and issued a sharp criticism towards his supporters from the MAGA movement, who have shown anger following the Justice Department’s statement that there was no proof that the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein maintained a “client list”.
The rapid response from right-wing influencers against Trump and his supporters occurred following the Justice Department’s confirmation that Epstein died by suicide in August 2019 while in federal custody, along with the announcement that no additional information from the documents related to the Epstein sex trafficking case would be released.
It mentioned that this was because of a court ruling safeguarding victims, and that “only a small portion” would have been disclosed to the public if Epstein had gone to trial.
When a journalist tried to question Bondi regarding Epstein during a White House Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump interjected and criticized the reporter, stating: “Are you still discussing Jeffrey Epstein? This individual has been talked about for years. We have Texas… Are people still talking about this creep? That is incredible.”
“I can’t believe you’re raising a question about Epstein during such a critical moment, when we’re experiencing significant achievements — and also sorrow, following the events in Texas. It feels like an insult,” Trump remarked.
In response to the questions, Bondi tried to explain her earlier statements, which have been at the heart of the controversy related to the so-called Epstein Files: she was questioned on Fox News in February regarding an Epstein “client list” and stated that such a document was “on [her] desk right now for review”.
Repeating the explanation provided on her behalf on Tuesday by officials from the White House and the Justice Department, Bondi stated that she was referring to the documents related to the Epstein case as a whole, rather than a specific “client list,” which the Justice Department claims does not exist.
The “client list” denotes a persistent conspiracy theory suggesting that the sex offender maintained a record of prominent individuals and celebrities to whom minor girls were trafficked, enabling him to extort them.
‘Missing minute’
Bondi was also questioned regarding the video footage released by the Justice Department from within a New York prison, aiming to finally put an end to rumors that Epstein had died while in custody before his sex trafficking trial.
The video that was released seems to experience a glitch as the timer changes from 11:58pm to 11:59pm, jumping forward by a minute to midnight, leading to various conspiracy theories about the “missing minute” in the recording.
The public prosecutor stated that it was due to a long-standing technical aspect of how the prison video recordings are captured.
“There was a specific moment that was not on the counter, and according to what we discovered from the Bureau of Prisons, they re-record that video every night, meaning the video is reset each night, and each night should have the same minute missing,” she stated.
Bondi mentioned that evidence would be made public demonstrating that.
She further explained her earlier statement during the press conference, where she mentioned that the FBI was examining “tens of thousands of videos” involving the financier “with children or child pornography,” stating: “Concerning the tens of thousands of videos — they were actually child pornography downloaded by that despicable Jeffrey Epstein … They will never be released, and they will never see the light of day.”
The most recent updates in the Epstein documents seem to have deepened the divide between Bondi and Trump’s right-wing supporters, as the case has consistently attracted various conspiracy theories over time.
The prosecutor general first upset supporters of the “Make America Great Again” movement when a document release given to right-wing figures in February was found to mainly consist of information already available to the public, with no fresh details.