Bulwark Takes - Pam Bondi’s Epstein Binder Blunder Exposes Political Motives

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

Will Sommer is joined by journalist Tara Palmeri to discuss the DOJ’s recent memo closing the Jeffrey Epstein case, Pam Bondi’s reversal on the investigation, and the many unanswered questions about evidence and ongoing investigations. Follow @tarapalmeri Subscribe to Tara’s Substack

I'ma put you on, nephew. I don't. Welcome to McDonald's. Can I take your order? Miss, I've been hitting up McDonald's for years. Now it's back. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap?

It's the return of something great. Snack wrap is back. Welcome back to The Bulwark on YouTube. My name is Will Summer. I'm a reporter with The Bulwark and I'm joined today by Tara Palmieri. She's all over Substack. She writes the red letter note. She's on YouTube with The Tara Palmieri Show and she's all over Substack. She writes the red letter note. She's on YouTube with the Tara Palmeri show.

And she is an expert on all things Jeffrey Epstein because she did, I believe not one, but two podcasts about Jeffrey Epstein, one being called Broken Jeffrey Epstein. And so obviously there's so much Jeffrey Epstein news now that the Justice Department has come out and essentially closed the case. So we wanted to get her take.

Tara, what was your reaction to the Jeffrey Epstein memo? I think it was a cover your ass memo. I think this was a closed case memo. I think that's what Pam Bondi was trying to say. Nothing to see here. We're moving on from this. She has botched this case from the very beginning with her binder gate and the classified documents, classified, I say in quotes, documents, which are all public documents she gave over to

right-wing influencers. And I think she realized, like, you have to take this seriously, this story, this case, and she has not. She sees it as a political weapon, a charade, and she'd been buying herself time. That's what my sources tell me. And this was her way of dealing with it. A Fourth of July memo basically saying, there are no Johns, there was no blackmail, he didn't kill him, he wasn't killed, he killed himself. We're not going forward with anything else. Nothing to see here, people move on. I also think she probably felt some pressure from the boss who's been dragged into all

of this. And by the boss, I mean Donald Trump, who's been dogged by it by Elon Musk. But I don't think she has any credibility on this topic. I think her credibility is about as little as a reply on a Reddit thread. So when they're saying, you know, there weren't any Johns, there weren't, you know, he wasn't blackmailing anyone, these various claims. I mean, how does that conflict with the reporting you've done on this case? I mean, I was just talking to law enforcement officials

at a very senior level a few weeks ago saying, yeah, we have footage, we have videos, you know, we have pictures. we have videos, we have pictures, we wanna build cases against these very powerful johns, but it's gonna be really hard. I mean, we just saw the Diddy case, prosecutors tried to stand up the case and they failed. And they don't like to do that

unless they think there's a good chance that they'll win. Another wrinkle to all of this, that Epstein kept a lot of the young girls to himself and a lot of the women that he trafficked to these friends of his, they were over 18. This makes it a little bit more complicated. I know from the victims that I've spoken to that their lawyers brought them into FBI headquarters

to try to identify their bodies, their naked bodies with men over them. So we know that there is, there are evidence, there's footage, there's documents, even when he was was there was the first raid on his house in 2005 for the first uh charge against him for sex trafficking they um the police found tons and tons of surveillance in his home so where do you think what do you think's going on here i mean i i know as a reporter you're reluctant to speculate but like what is the

motivation here for the justice Department to close the case? I mean just last week you were saying that your reporting showed that they were working on these cases that maybe they're complex Maybe it takes a while but there was interest in pursuing prosecution and all of a sudden they're closing the book Yes, and there's a bit of a rift going on between the FBI and the DOJ I think think, on this a little bit. And, you know, this is a political decision to close this case, is what I gather from all of this. And I think most you know, prosecutions are political, but I think it's just become too icky and Trump is being dragged into it. And I think that's part of it. I also think that they haven't been able, they have so far had, have no goods.

Like they haven't been able to actually provide anything. They haven't been able to put together a strong case and they'd like to see it go away, but that's not going to happen. And also they still can't account, they can't account for that minute lapse in the 11 hour hallway video. Why not the cell? Why can't we see the cell? The evidence prior to it was showing he committed suicide.

And what was on that, there was a minute that was off the counter. And what we learned from Bureau of Prisons was every year, every night, they redo that video. It's old from like 1999. So every night the video is reset and every night should have the same minute missing. So we're looking for that video to release that as well showing that a minute is missing

every night. And that's it on Epstein. Yeah. Well, let's get into the nitty gritty about that. I mean, what is going on with that minute lapse? I mean, it strikes me that if you're, I think the Justice Department just came out today and said, well, there's kind of always a minute lapse on that tape, which seems a little convenient. You know, if you're a conspiracy theorist, I think that would be something to really latch on to understandably.

So it seems like a lot of the evidence we're seeing is not really that that is positive in the way that they want it to be. Yeah, no, it just doesn't like add up. There's so much of it that doesn't add up. I mean, I always knew there wasn't a client list. But just the fact that Pam Bonney said at one time, I have a client list on my desk. How can you believe anything she says from that point going forward? The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients? Will that really happen? It's sitting on my desk right now to review. You know, Glaine Maxwell's in prison for sex trafficking, right?

To who? Right. Yeah. So, I mean, talk about the... You mentioned you think Pam Bondi's really kind of made a hash of all this. You know, I mean, the Epstein Binder's debacle was such a mess. I mean, and you're someone who's talked to the victims here. I mean, do you think the Trump administration has really made kind of like a weird spectacle of what should be a much more serious case? Yes, but they've always seen it as a political weapon. They weaponized this. They liked it. The conspiracy theories behind it. Oh, it's all Democrats on the list.

Truth is that there are people from both sides of the aisle on that list and not list because it's not a list, but files. By files, I mean a little black book where Trump has 14 numbers for him, or the flight logs where he's also listed, or just the files in general. There are a lot of people, a lot of Epstein's associates that are in there. Now I've seen lists that survivors of Jeffrey Epstein have come up with and said, I was traffic to these men. And those haven't been made public, but that's their, that was their, you know, their list, you could say. I don't really like using that word list, but.

Well, let's get into that, because obviously there's so much focus on this idea of the list is the list going to come out. I mean, the memo said, well, there is no list. There is so much on the list. But what you're saying is that there's not one list. It's like it's a bit semantics. There's what they have is way more damning. I mean, video footage, evidence, pictures, that's way more damning than a piece of paper that

claims that these are people that he trafficked young girls to. Yeah. So, you know, on another note, I mean, obviously the elephant in the room here is that Donald Trump was friends at least at at one point, with Jeffrey Epstein. There's all these videos of them together. Yeah, they were very good. Elon Musk came out and said, you know, that Trump is in the files and that's why they can't come out. I mean, how much do you think that's playing into it? Yeah, I don't think it's convenient for Trump anymore to have this conversation going.

But the last... But when you want to kill a conversation, you say stop talking about it, that's the last thing that you wanna do. So I think Trump definitely wants to kill the conversation. I'm sure that has, is a factor in this. Well, and just earlier today on Tuesday, Trump you may have seen, or said at his press conference, he said, someone asked about Epstein,

and he said, how are you still talking about Epstein? You know, we gotta move on from this. Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years. What changed? I mean, it strikes me that the Trump and the administration was once very, uh, kind of gung ho that, you know, we're going to find Bill Clinton or someone like that or in the files and all of a sudden it's like, whoa, you know, why are you asking about Epstein? Because it was turned on him.

So where do you think this goes next? I mean, do you think obviously the Justice Department says it's over, but there are members of Congress, you know, I think including some Republicans who have said they want more, you know, who knows? I mean, what do you think? Is it over or do you think there are some more beats to come? I hope it's not over.

It'll be up to Congress, too, right, to really push for it. And yeah, I think, I mean, I hope it's not. And so, I don't know. I can't tell you. I wish that I knew. Like I said a week ago, law enforcement sources said they were working on cases. So did that surprise you then when, when the memo came out that, that, I mean, you were getting the reporting as just a week ago that this was still a live issue. And suddenly they're saying it's all over. Yeah, it was very surprising. And I went back to my source about it and they were like, well, it's up to Pam Bonnie, she's that of the DOJ.

So it works. Um, it's political. So it was really political. And, and they see it really as Pambandi having botched the case all along. Um, and, and because of that, you know, they, yeah, that she botched the case and that this is her way of fixing it. I mean, and that she feels like she's been trying to buy time to fix it. And this is, you know, she's also someone who doesn't really know much about the case either, clearly.

And it's been, it's created a rift within the apartments, but yeah, she's just been trying to buy time ever since she was even on Fox and saying, I'm going to do something about the Epstein list. I'm going to do something about Epstein, but nothing. So I think it was her way of saying, okay, nothing to see her case closed. Let's move on. Do you think she initially saw this as her opportunity to sort of like increase her star power within Mago World. She clearly, you know, she was handing out the binder, she was claiming she had the list,

and then it blew up on her, and so now she's just trying to shut it down. Yeah. That is what is happening. That is exactly what's happening, Will. Yeah. This is a cover your ass memo. I don't think it's gonna work. People aren't gonna buy it. So... So you think these questions will persist?

Yes, absolutely. I would assume so. We don't live in communist Russia. Right, right. Okay, well, clearly the questions are going to continue about the F-CN investigation, even as Trump says it's all over. Tara Palmieri, thank you so much for joining us.

She's on Substack at the Red Letter Newsletter, as well as on YouTube with the Tara Palmieri, thank you so much for joining us. Her she's on sub stack at the Red Letter newsletter, as well as on YouTube with the Tara Palmieri show. Tara, thank you. Thank you. I'm gonna put you on that view. I don't welcome McDonald's. Can I take your order? Miss I've been hitting up McDonald's for years. Now it's back. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. snack wrap is back.