The other day, I watched the spectacle between Democrats and Attorney General Pam Bondi before the House Judiciary Committee over the release of the Epstein files — you know, the files they didn’t give one hoot about until they got it in their heads that they could hurt Trump. Only then did they bay for his blood. But I have an unpopular opinion about how this whole thing has played out in the media so far.
The Democrats and Republicans came together to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), forcing Pam to get off X and push out the millions of files that 200 of her Department of Justice attorneys vetted, converted into electronic documents, and uploaded to a searchable database that anyone can sort through from the comfort of their own laptop. It wasn’t on time, but it was an undeniable feat.
Some of the women who were Epstein victims and were in the audience that day, wearing color-coded shirts, were accidentally included. Big mistake. “Within 40 minutes” of learning they were included in error, their names were redacted. Now Bondi is being accused of running a cover-up, and that assertion, whether real or imagined, has been given oxygen by the media.
But that’s not how they viewed another similarly situated incident not too long ago.
Compare this to the 55,000 pages containing the 33,000 emails that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton kept on her private, non-government server that was almost certainly pierced by intelligence agencies from around the world.
Clinton, whose own husband was featured in the Epstein files getting massages from the girls, had someone print out the emails, put them in banker's boxes with rough date ranges between 2009 and 2013, and dump them on the Republicans. She pulled an old-fashioned document dump. Republicans were hoping to get a look at her missing emails, some of which they believed were responsive to their investigation into Hillary’s Benghazi debacle.
ABC News oohed and ahhed over Hillary's efforts to turn over the documents.
The news outfit reported, without irony, that Hillary herself worked to release the emails. What a complete joke of an assertion.
The first painstaking request was made by Clinton herself, when in the wake of revelations that she had used a private email server during her time as the nation's top diplomat, she handed them over to the State Department and requested that it release all of them.
These dishonest actors are depending on you to forget that Hillary never reported her home-based server, that it had minimal, if any, encryption, and wasn’t vetted by U.S. government IT experts. Indeed, Hillary dismissed her emails as mere yoga and wedding nothings in such a notorious fashion that candidate Donald Trump joked, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Rewarded by the press, my ass. The media instead reported his joke as an appeal to Russia to hack her server. Maybe these dishonest “reporters” didn’t get the memo that the guy who would later be behind the 51 Spies Who Lied letter about Hunter Biden’s very real laptop — former acting CIA Director Mike Morell — had already acknowledged to Salem talk host Hugh Hewitt that Hillary’s server had most certainly been spied on by intelligence agencies around the world, friend and foe alike. Trump knew it, too. Duh.
Washington state Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who somehow got on the House Judiciary Committee despite her organizing of anti-Elon, anti-ICE, anti-capitalism riots/protests around the country, had never mentioned Epstein. My AI check of her comments about Epstein between 2020 and 2024 came up with bupkis. “Between 2020 and 2024, there is no public record of Pramila Jayapal making notable, widely quoted statements focused specifically on Jeffrey Epstein; her prominent comments and clashes on the issue all appear in 2026, centered on the release and handling of the Epstein files by the Department of Justice under Attorney General Pam Bondi,” Perplexity AI responded. Gee, I’m sure her sudden interest has nothing to do with the 2026 election right around the corner.
Yet here was the commie using the hearing as a moment to embarrass Bondi. “Will you apologize to these women?” Jayapal asked. For what, exactly? Did Pam assault these women or something? The ex-officio “Squad” member wanted to give credence to the left’s notion that somehow becoming the person tasked with releasing all of these millions of files was a punishable offense for her failure to name their attackers.
At least that's what they want you to think.
And here's where things stick in my craw.
These women were victimized by Epstein and, they claim, other unnamed attackers. Neither the victims nor their attorney will release any of the names of the attackers. After all these years, you’d think their memories, trauma, and photos seen in the flood of six million files would pry loose a few names. They claimed to be traumatized by their names appearing in the first round of Epstein files, and I’m sure they were. Yet here they were in Washington, D.C., posing in front of cameras at the behest of Jayapal, who’d never given them the time of day. They demanded an apology from a woman who had nothing whatsoever to do with the Epstein case before being told to release the files. Hey, Pam, don’t screw up national security!
Well, come on. There's plenty of information that Epstein was a financier for all the biggest CIA ops — including the Iran Contra affair. He made deals with arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and other notorious financiers. It's how it's believed he amassed his fortune. It's likely he leveraged Lex Wexner's fortune to get this whole business model started.
Bondi testified that she would unredact any names deemed to be important. For example, when told that Epstein friend and financier Wexner, was redacted, she immediately unredacted it. Epstein had control over Wexner's Victoria's Secret and Limited Brands fortune for some time. His connection with Epstein was not a secret, Victoria's or otherwise. It was dumb to redact his name. Was it a crime to temporarily redact his name?
Bondi testified that the DOJ wouldn't reveal names that could affect investigations or prosecutions, for national security or foreign policy reasons, or anything pertaining to underage abuse. That's a wide net, but it doesn't prove a cover-up.
The irony is that the one set of leaders who are being blamed for covering up the Epstein files are the only ones who have produced the Epstein files. The media are going along with that framing, as you can see from this interview on NBC News right after the hearing last week. The reporter accused the DOJ chief of "not taking accountability." For what? This was media malpractice. NBC News went along with the idea that it was somehow a cover-up by Bondi.
Reminder: Amy Robach had granular details of the Epstein case that was spiked by ABC News in 2015. Did Pam Bondi have anything to do with that? No, of course not. Who's doing the "cover-up" again?
Victims hope that Bondi will include all the names in the Epstein files, and they can claim these people were, by default, their attackers without being sued. By releasing the names in the document or by giving the names to the Democrats on the committee, the victims are hoping that the Speech and Debate clause will prevent lawsuits.
Here's another way to look at the Epstein files, as I discussed with J. Michael Waller, author of Big Intel, on The Adult in the Room podcast.
