U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi ducked out of a summit on human trafficking on Wednesday, citing a medical issue, as new reporting emerged to intensify the pressure on President Donald Trump over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Shortly after The Wall Street Journal reported that Bondi informed Trump in May that his name appears multiple times in the Justice Department’s files on the late sex offender, her absence from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)’s Summit Against Human Trafficking was announced.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Galeotti notified the audience at the event in Washington, D.C., by reading aloud a statement that read: “I’m sorry to miss all of my CPAC friends today… Unfortunately, I am recovering from a recently torn cornea, which is preventing me from being with you.
“I truly wish I was able to join you and support all of the work being done on this critical issue.”
Trump is already suing the Journal after it alleged last week that he sent a “bawdy” hand-drawn birthday card to Epstein.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung moved quickly to deny the newspaper’s latest bombshell, calling it “nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media.”
Also on Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee moved to subpoena both the files and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s jailed accomplice, while federal judges in New York and Florida rejected requests to unseal grand jury transcripts related to investigations into the duo.
The scandal erupted on July 7 when the FBI and Justice Department abruptly announced that no Epstein “client list” existed and that the financier died by his own hand in a New York jail cell in August 2019, infuriating Trump’s supporters who long believed they would finally see the sex trafficker’s allies and enablers held to account.
The result has been weeks of infighting among the president’s MAGA coalition, with Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Deputy Director Dan Bongino bearing the brunt of the criticism and accused of orchestrating a “cover-up.”
Critics of the AG include podcaster Liz Wheeler, who was one of several right-wing influencers invited to the White House in February to receive binders of documents on Epstein that were already publicly available.
“I was one of the ‘new media’ figures… who have been put through the ringer for Attorney General Pam Bondi’s gross incompetence and her severe lack of judgement in the way that she rolled that out,” she said.
“It’s time to rectify this issue, which is why I said [the president] should not tolerate Pam Bondi’s behaviour anymore.”
Wheeler continued: “The base feels stung because we have not been told the truth and we associate the Epstein files now with the question of, are we going to get the justice we voted for?
“The American people feel that this is injustice. They feel that they are being played. They feel there is dishonesty afoot. And of course that triggers us because we have been harmed by politicians doing this before.
“What we do as President Trump’s base is, a true friend tells you the truth, even when that truth is uncomfortable, even when that truth might have consequences.”
Former Republican congressman Joe Walsh has also attacked Bondi on social media, writing: “We don’t have an Attorney General. We haven’t had one for the past six months. Pam Bondi is Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. Nothing more.
“We’ve normalized his corruption. And America will pay such a steep price for doing so. Shame on us.”
On Capitol Hill last night, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin told reporters: “Time and again, Pam Bondi and President Trump have lied to the American people. They are destroying Americans’ trust in our justice system.”
