Editorials & Other Articles

On Feb. 27, Bondi made a big, public to-do on Fox News, claiming she and Patel had just been “surprised” to learn the FBI had “thousands of pages” of evidence in the Epstein case that they hadn’t turned over to her despite the bureau’s assurances they had provided all the available documents. She sent a letter to Patel at the time, ordering him to get to the bottom of it, and to deliver a report about his findings in two weeks. We don’t know what happened to that report.

The very next day, however, the DOJ returned to Trump troves of sensitive government documents he took with him to Mar-a-Lago upon leaving office in 2021. The White House at the time would not confirm whether Trump took all the documents back, or whether he allowed the government to retain some of them.

A master Epstein evidence manifest shows the government “acquired” at least four pieces of Epstein evidence in late February and March of last year. The first is dated as “acquired” on Feb. 27, the day Bondi went public about the additional files and ordered Patel to investigate. The other three are dated March 10, as the DOJ was carrying out its five-alarm, all-hands Epstein files review — and, reportedly, scrambling to find and flag all the references to Trump.