In a moment of high political theater that raised more questions than it answered, Attorney General Pam Bondi faced a Senate inquiry recently, only to sidestep a direct question with a counter-accusation so personal it left the chamber in a state of suspended disbelief.
Attorney General Pam Bondi refused to say if the Federal Bureau of Investigation has photographs of President Donald Trump with naked young women, while under direct examination.
The exchange, a masterclass in deflection, has ignited a fresh firestorm of speculation regarding the contents of the late financier Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous files.
The confrontation unfolded before the Senate Judiciary Committee when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, pressed the nation’s top law enforcement official on whether the Department of Justice had pursued suspicious activity reports concerning Epstein’s financial transactions.
He then moved to the heart of the matter, asking if the Federal Bureau of Investigation possesses photographs, as has been alleged in certain circles, showing President Donald Trump with naked young women.
Instead of a simple confirmation or denial, Bondi launched a rhetorical offensive.
She turned to question the senator’s own integrity, alleging he had accepted campaign contributions from Reid Hoffman, a Democratic donor she described as “one of Epstein’s closest confidants.”
“You took money, I believe — did you? — from Reid Hoffman, one of Epstein’s closest confidants not only once but twice in 2018 and 2024, if that’s correct,” Bondi said.
The effect was immediate. The attorney general, a former prosecutor, had chosen the path of a courtroom brawler, attacking the questioner rather than addressing the question. It was a maneuver that, in the court of public opinion, often suggests a client with something to hide.
Whitehouse later called the accusation “simply isn’t true,” telling CNN that a review of his public campaign finance records found no contributions from Hoffman.
He accused Bondi of venturing into “false accusations” and a “salacious discussion” to avoid the subject at hand.
The senator’s attempt to correct the record was thwarted by the committee’s presiding chair, Republican Sen. Ashley Moody of Florida, who refused to grant him a point of personal privilege.
Bondi’s refusal to answer the central query hangs over a former president already shadowed by a history of legal entanglements concerning his conduct with women.
A federal jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, a finding the presiding judge later stated was tantamount to rape in the “common modern parlance.”
He remains the only U.S. president ever convicted of a crime, found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush-money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, with whom he had an affair while his wife was at home with their newborn son.
Further darkening this history, a 2016 lawsuit filed in federal court in Riverside, California, alleged Trump and Epstein held a 13-year-old girl as a “sex slave.”
The plaintiff, using the pseudonym “Katie Johnson,” claimed she was raped by Trump at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse in 1994. The case was dismissed after the plaintiff’s attorney said his client received death threats.
Subsequent versions of the lawsuit were filed and later withdrawn.
By choosing to engage in a personal skirmish rather than providing a clear answer from the FBI’s vault of information, the attorney general has ensured that the whispers about what may lie within Epstein’s files will only grow louder.
In the grand American tradition, when an official will not say what is not, the people are left to wonder what is, and fanning the flames of speculation is GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson’s delay in swearing in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, who won a special election in Arizona for a seat left vacant by the death of her father, but has now waited more than a month to be sworn into office.
The festering rumors are also kept alive as former Assemblyman Giacchino Michael ‘Jack’ Ciattarelli, the Republican gubernatorial nominee who won the primary with Trump’s endorsement, is identifying ‘family values’ as a campaign issue.
“It’s time to release the full Epstein Files — and I’ve signed the bipartisan discharge petition to force a vote in the House to require Donald Trump and his administration to do just that,” said Ciattarelli’s rival, Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, on September 4. “The survivors of Epstein’s crimes deserve justice, and the American people demand accountability.”
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