Speculation and rumors over embattled Attorney General Pam Bondi’s future in the Trump administration are spreading. Everyone knows President Donald Trump is going to need a fall guy as the Jeffrey Epstein crisis dogs him at every turn these days.
Trump can’t make any public appearances without being pestered about Epstein, what he knew about the sex trafficker’s crimes and when he knew it. Rather than dying down, the controversy has taken on a life of its own. No matter the event, Trump is constantly asked about it.
And Bondi hasn’t been seen in any real public capacity in weeks. She cancelled a speech she was preparing to give at the last reported public event she was scheduled to attend, a high-profile anti-trafficking event in mid-July.
Bondi pulled out of CPAC’s Summit Against Human Trafficking in Washington on July 23 citing “a recently torn cornea” amid headlines dominated by Trump’s relationship with the disgraced financier and as the drum beat to release the Epstein files grew steadily louder.
So far Trump has defended Bondi, who has helped him gut and reshape the Justice Department, but the President is fuming about the ballooning Epstein controversy and the condemnation from MAGA voters and opponents alike.
And now, a bombshell Bloomberg report has only added fuel to the fire. According to the outlet, the FBI—under Bondi’s direction—conducted a sweeping March review of the Epstein case that involved more than 1,000 agents combing through files. During that process, Trump’s name was redacted numerous times under FOIA privacy exemptions, with the FBI arguing he was a private citizen at the time the investigation began.
But journalist and longtime Washington insider Eleanor Clift believes Bondi’s days are numbered. Clift writes that the attorney general is in a “particularly precarious position,” after promising to release the Epstein files then making a complete 180 saying there was nothing else to tell.
Bondi could turn into the red meat the MAGA horde base is demanding as the notoriously short-tempered Trump mulls over his options.
Clift writes the “MAGA base doesn’t want to turn on Trump, but they want someone to pay for the switcheroo they’ve been served.”
That means Bondi will become the “likely fall guy.”
Bondi’s troubles began shortly after becoming attorney general earlier this year when in late February she said during a Fox News interview that she had Epstein’s client list.
“It’s sitting on my desk right now to review,” she told host John Roberts. “That’s been a directive by President Trump. I’m reviewing that.”
The scandal really exploded in early July when the Justice Department said it had closed the case on Epstein, after Trump and many in his inner circle spent years stoking conspiracy theories around Epstein’s death in jail, allegedly by suicide in 2019, and about his famous so called “client list.”
Trump’s supporters went wild after the announcement, attacking Trump and his administration for what they saw as a betrayal and the backtracking on the campaign promise to release the files.
Later in July news reports surfaced alleging Bondi had told Trump twice in May that his name was in the Epstein files and that that was part of the decision to close the case.
“It’s like ‘The Apprentice’ taking place in the White House with Cabinet secretaries and top officials knowing that in order to survive they better do anything they can to please him, even when it’s not in the best interest of the American people,” Michael Sozan with the Center for Americans Politics said, according to the Daily Beast.
“She still sits at the apex of the decision-making. I don’t see how she successfully gets out of this,” Sozan added.
The insider claimed the only way Bondi can get off the chopping block is to continue grasping at straws to make a new scandal stick.
Clift says Bondi along with Tulsi Gabbard, who she calls “dispensable” are both “scrambling to come up with something that will get Trump off the hook—and themselves too. Or, at least, until some better bait comes along; a phony investigation of Obama and his national security team can go on for months, even years, stirring the pot by subpoenaing the people around the former president without coming up with anything actionable.”
If Bondi was feeling the pressure to save her job and her boss, social media is not making it any easier on her.
“Hey Pam Bondi – How do you live with yourself knowing powerful, wealthy, old men were raping little girls and you’re trying to cover it up for Trump. Bondi was the FL AG from 2011-2019 in the very state Epstein engaged in his child sex ring,” an X user accused.
“With everything she has done to undermine the judiciary, her law license should be revoked,” Trek3871 said on X.
Social media sleuths have taken the time to track Bondi’s public appearances. One user even captured screenshots of her many appearances on Fox News and other networks to highlight the obvious drop in her public interviews.
He wrote, “All of a sudden, Pam Bondi, the woman that never met a Fox or Newsmax camera she didn’t love, who seemingly was on TV every single night, has disappeared.”
Another shared a similar sentiment, “Pam Bondi went silent after the Epstein files cover-up. She was on the TV every day, all day. What’s she hiding from?”
Trump had a well-known relationship with Epstein until the early 2000s but has denied he was involved with any of Epstein’s criminal enterprises or that he was ever on Epstein’s planes.
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