MS NOW producer Steve Benen argues Attorney General Pam Bondi’s reason for re-opening a case she personally closed could not be more obvious, or embarrassing.
“Maybe the attorney general wasn’t comfortable saying ‘I do whatever Trump tells me to do, regardless of merit’ during an on-camera press conference,” Benen said.
In July, Bondi’s very own Justice Department released a joint statement with the FBI declaring that after “an exhaustive review” of “investigative holdings relating to Jeffrey Epstein,” investigators had concluded the case closed. Based on all of the available information, Benen said the two departments agreed there was nothing to justify further inquiries into any of Epstein’s alleged connections or co-conspirators.
But last week, Benen said Bondi made “a dramatic U-turn,” reopening the case and tapping a federal prosecutor to continue the investigation that she had declared dead four months ago.
When asked by a reporter why she was rekindling the cold investigation Bondi replied, “Information. There’s information that’s new information, additional information.”
“As for what ‘information’ she was referring to, neither Bondi nor Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche would say,” Benen said.
“It’s certainly possible that the Justice Department’s and the FBI’s ‘exhaustive review’ missed important detail, which emerged four months later, but there’s a more logical explanation,” Benen said, and he cited President Donald Trump personally directing the Justice Department and the FBI to launch a new investigation into the case of the convicted sex offender and target it at Democrats.
“I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“Four hours later, Bondi did as she was told, discarding her own declarations from the summer,” said Benen.
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Bondi wrote in a post on X that included a screenshot of Trump’s request.
“The new line is that the series of events is merely coincidental. Sure, the president who has effectively taken control of the Justice Department barked a foolish order. And sure, his loyalist AG acted four hours later. But what really happened, according to Bondi, is that officials just happened to learn of new ‘information’ she wasn’t at liberty to share at the same time as Trump published a silly tweet telling the DOJ what to do,” Benen said.
Read the full MS NOW report at this link.