President Donald Trump is tired of defending Attorney General Pam Bondi and wants her to take the flak for the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
“One thing that’s been clear is his feelings about it,” an unnamed White House official told NBC News. “This now resides within the DOJ.”
Trump has faced MAGA rage since his administration earlier this month shut down its investigation into the Epstein files, announcing that there was no evidence of a “client list” or that the dead pedophile was murdered.
In February, Bondi hyped up a release of files related to Epstein, handing out large binders to a group of MAGA influencers. But curiosity turned to anger when the binders contained no new revelations.
While insiders said that Bondi is not yet at risk of losing her job over the crisis, they made it clear that Trump is no longer interested in protecting her from blowback related to her handling of the situation.
“I do think that he likes and respects Pam, but she has without question caused some headaches for them,” one source told NBC. “At the end of the day, at this point, she is almost assuredly just doing what she is told, so I believe she is very safe, but has had missteps.”
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to address the Epstein matter in a statement to the Daily Beast.
“Attorney General Pam Bondi is working tirelessly to end the weaponization that has rotted our justice system, remove violent criminals from our streets, and help President Trump in making America safe again,” she wrote. “The President is appreciative of her efforts.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
While Trump may be eager to let Bondi soak up the backlash, The Atlantic reported Friday that he has shot down every idea his team has offered for addressing the Epstein situation—including appointing a special counsel, asking courts to unseal documents on Epstein, and having Bondi host a press conference.
Instead, even as the situation refused to cool down, the president stuck to his initial course of action: do nothing.
“He’s being tested and doesn’t like it,” an official told the magazine. “He doesn’t want to talk about it.”
That changed when Trump learned that The Wall Street Journal was working on a big story about the situation, The Atlantic reported. Trump, believing he could kill it, slammed his supporters for caring about the Epstein crisis and called it a Democratic “hoax.”
The story, which dropped on Thursday despite the president’s efforts, revealed that Trump’s gift to Epstein on his 50th birthday: a drawing of a naked woman and a note alluding to a shared “secret.”
While Trump has called the story “fake” and sued the Journal for $10 billion, the president also seemed finally to accept that his administration’s Epstein crisis wouldn’t just disappear.
On Friday, Trump announced that, with court approval, he and Bondi would release grand jury transcripts related to Epstein’s case. Critics have pointed out that federal law would likely prevent that release—which has yet to happen—and the resulting information would be limited in scope.
During the 1990s and early 2000s, Trump was a friend of Epstein, who died in his prison cell in 2019, and the two men were photographed together on multiple occasions.
