The sharpest rebuke that any federal judge ever hurled at me – and there were several – went something like this: “You’ve already gone out on a limb you need not have climbed out on. And now you’re in the process of sawing that limb out from under yourself.”
I thought of that zinger this week while watching Attorney General Pam Bondi flounder through her staggeringly inept mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Bondi has ensnared herself in a dilemma of her own creation, and somehow she keeps making it worse. In the process, she has — apparently unwittingly — allowed Donald Trump to use her as a human shield, a well-placed scapegoat.
The limb that Bondi need not have climbed out on (in the aforementioned judge’s analogy) is her initial promise to make public the most damning Epstein documents – despite the Justice Department’s longstanding, uncontroversial policy against disclosing its internal investigative case files. The reasons for this policy, long honored by administrations of both political parties, are obvious. We prosecutors do our talking in court – through indictments and briefs and motions and trial evidence – and not in the media or other public outlets. We don’t taint the potential jury pool against a person who has been indicted, and we don’t disseminate damaging information about people who have not been criminally charged and have no formal venue in which to defend themselves.
There are exceptions, of course. DOJ can turn over investigative files if properly subpoenaed in a civil or criminal case, if subject to a valid Freedom of Information Act request, or if appropriately requested by Congress or other government investigative entities. But the Justice Department, as a core policy matter, doesn’t casually publish its own investigative files to satisfy public curiosity, or even to inform the general public of bad (but uncharged) behavior.
Bondi either didn’t know about this bedrock Justice Department policy when she vowed to expose the Epstein documents, or she didn’t care. She took office in February 2025 full of bluster about how she’d finally be the one to crack open the Epstein files and share their contents with the world.
Once she put herself out on a limb by ignoring DOJ policy, Bondi began the sawing-off process when she stoked public expectations with a series of overblown teases about the contents of the Epstein files. She promised “breaking news,” “a lot of names,” and “pretty sick” revelations. She distributed binders ominously marked “The Epstein Files: Phase I” to right-wing influencers – who quickly realized they’d been duped (the binders mostly contained documents that had already been released, and contained no new insights). She promised that the Epstein client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review,” though she later claimed she meant some unspecified set of the Epstein documents generally, and not necessarily some smoking-gun piece of paper marked “Client List.”
And then, after months of promises, the AG suddenly and completely reversed course. Last week, she released an FBI memo concluding there was “no incriminating ‘client list;’” that Epstein killed himself in prison and was not murdered; that there was no evidence to support additional criminal charges against anyone; and that “no further disclosure [of documents] would be appropriate or warranted.”
This week, Bondi confirmed that, despite her prior vow to release the Epstein files, she stands behind the conclusions in the FBI’s memo, which “speaks for itself.” The AG’s turnabout evoked rage from many of Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters – several of whom have called for Bondi’s resignation or firing.
Bondi could have avoided this mess. All she had to do was point to the established DOJ policy and explain, “As a rule, we don’t give out our closed criminal investigative files. I didn’t invent the rule and, like it or not, both parties have long observed it. Imagine if we didn’t follow this rule; anyone digging for dirt on anyone else could just thumb through our closed case files and have a look around. It would be mayhem, and destructive. So, no, we never make our investigative files public and we won’t do that now. If we receive a subpoena or other valid legal request, we will consider it and respond accordingly.”
There you go. People would have rolled their eyes, or perhaps worse than that (yelled on a podcast, maybe). But the rule – buzzkill though it may be – would have provided Bondi with good cover, were she smart enough to take it.
I stipulate that the Justice Department’s policies can be stodgy and frustrating and generally no fun. Virtually everyone would like to know the names of heavy hitters implicated in the Epstein files; I’d be first on line to find out. But that’s how good rules work. They can yield exasperating results – but they typically funnel decisionmakers towards the better outcome. And those rules can protect the principals in the process.
The fact is, either Donald Trump or Bondi has the power to release whatever documents they want. It’s a bad idea, and contrary to the aforementioned DOJ policy, but they certainly can do it. The big question, then – which remains unresolved for now, and perhaps permanently – is: Why? Why the stark reversal in Bondi’s position? She’s not the only one, of course; everyone from Trump himself to J.D. Vance to FBI Director Kash Patel has vowed at some point to blast the Epstein files out to the world. But now they’re cowering behind Bondi, who has made herself the lightning rod in this storm.
In broad strokes, we’ve logically got only two plausible explanations for the shift from “Release it all!” to “Nothing to see here!” Either there’s genuinely nothing more of any import within the three hundred gigabytes of Epstein-related documents in the FBI’s possession, or there’s something that Bondi (and perhaps others) don’t want to release to the public.
Recognizing the dilemma, Trump this week turned Bondi into a heat shield. First, he said the AG “should” release any “credible” information from the Epstein case files. Heaven knows what exactly “credible” means or who exactly gets to make that determination – though a reasonable partisan in Bondi’s position could infer it means “nothing that negatively impacts Trump himself.” Even if Bondi were to attempt this halfway approach, it’s doubtful the public would be satisfied by a partial production of certain hand-picked documents but not others.
Late Thursday night, the President again deployed his human deflector by posting on social media that Bondi should “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval,” Bondi responded publicly that she’d be in court the next day. But this exchange was largely performative, and is likely to result in the actual release of little, if any, new information.
First, written grand jury transcripts almost certainly comprise only a miniscule fraction of the entire universe of the Epstein files. In my fourteen years of prosecutorial experience, grand jury transcripts would typically be part of a complete file, of course, but a very small part – well under half of any given file, usually under ten percent, in terms of sheer volume. Even within the subset of documents relating to witness statements, most witnesses wind up speaking to prosecutors and the FBI outside of the grand jury; those statements would not be included in the AG’s request.
Next, there’s the word “pertinent.” Just as Trump carefully mucked things up in his prior instruction by using the word “credible,” “pertinent” is vague and in the eye of the beholder. “Pertinent” to what? “Pertinent” as assessed by who?
Finally, it’s far from certain that a judge will even agree to unseal grand jury documents. The federal rules provide that grand jury proceedings are secret, and can be released only in certain narrow circumstances: where a defendant needs them to make a motion to dismiss an indictment, for example, or where prosecutors need to provide evidence to other investigative bodies. There’s no listed exception to grand jury secrecy rules for scenarios where the president is freaking out and there’s a ton of public interest.
This is the same dance, repeated. The president makes some declaration that will enable him to look like a crusader for transparency – while kicking the issue over to Bondi, whose powers are limited and whose hands are largely tied. When the eventual release of Epstein documents winds up as a dud, Bondi will take the brunt of the blame.
Once again, Trump has crafted a palatable (if hypocritical) fallback position for himself: Hey, I said she should release the stuff; I want those documents out there, and I did my part – go yell at her. Bondi, however, remains stuck. She put herself in an untenable position, and now she’s making it worse by the day.
