“Epstein Is Dead:” Pam Bondi Is Neglecting Live Sex Trafficking Prosecutions to Criminalize Democrats
A week ago, on January 8, Donald Trump bitched out his US Attorneys (as well as those play-acting as US Attorney) — some, apparently, by name — because they are not focusing enough on prosecuting his perceived adversaries.
Dozens of U.S. attorneys, who lead prosecutors’ offices around the country, went to the White House Thursday for what was supposed to be a ceremonial photo shoot. After Attorney General Pam Bondi introduced the group of prosecutors, Trump criticized them as ineffective, saying the group was making it difficult for Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to do their jobs, the people said.
[snip]
Among his grievances with prosecutors, Trump complained that the Justice Department hadn’t yet brought a case against one of his most prominent Democratic adversaries, Sen. Adam Schiff of California, the people said.
The department has been investigating whether Schiff engaged in mortgage fraud. The senator has called the probe a bogus attempt at political retribution.
The president criticized some specific prosecutors by jurisdiction and said he felt betrayed, the people said.
[snip]
Trump’s blowup at Justice Department prosecutors comes as the president ramps up pressure on the agency to more aggressively pursue his priorities. He has complained repeatedly in recent weeks about Bondi, calling her an ineffective enforcer of his agenda.
As WSJ noted in its story on this, the day after Trump’s tantrum, Jeanine Pirro sent a subpoena to Jerome Powell, setting off a crisis for Trump.
Also in the wake of that attack, the Minnesota US Attorney’s Office decided to investigate Renee Good’s network rather than the guy who shot her, Jonathan Ross, leading to the resignation of six AUSAs in MN and possibly some in the Civil Rights Division in DC, though Pam Bondi — who looked stunning for a 59 year old a year ago but now looks like shit — now claims she fired those MN AUSAs and Harmeet Dhillon claims the Civil Rights attorneys left for other reasons.
Donald Trump has made it the top focus of his DOJ to prosecute his enemies, and as a result, DOJ has been hemorrhaging experience for a year now.
That’s on top of the singular focus on Stephen Miller’s jihad against immigrants, which has led DOJ to reassign lawyers from national security cases to immigration cases (indeed, that’s one of the stated reasons why Bondi fired Robert McBride, because the First AUSA for one of the key national security divisions in the country didn’t sufficiently chase immigration cases).
But there’s another staffing choice that became public in recent weeks.
As multiple outlets have covered and as Jay Clayton detailed in two letters (January 5; January 15) to Judges Richard Berman (who presided over the Epstein case) and Paul Engelmayer (who picked up the Ghislaine Maxwell case after Alison Nathan moved to the 2nd Circuit) — DOJ has dedicated up to 580 people (the 500 reported last week, plus another 80 added this week) to replicating the review that over a thousand FBI personnel did a year ago, this time accounting for victim privacy and “independent privileges” not permitted under the act.
To date, the Department has employed over five hundred reviewers to review and redact millions of pages of materials from the investigations into Epstein and his convicted coconspirator, Maxwell.2 The SDNY alone, in conjunction with the Department, has dedicated significant resources (including AUSAs as well as other SDNY personnel), which this week has been supplemented by approximately 80 attorneys from the Department’s Criminal Division, who will coordinate and work with SDNY during the review of documents identified as likely to contain victim information. As part of that review, the Department is identifying not only those materials the publication of which are required under the Act, but also those that carry independent privileges as well as the need to redact victim-identifying information, among other things. Act, § 2(c).3
3 Any materials withheld on this basis of course will be disclosed in a report to Congress. Act § 3.
We still have no explanation for what the hell Bondi did in the last review, such that she has to dedicate 580 attorneys to replicate the review (though the explanation probably lies in the matters DOJ plans to claim privilege over).
But not only is the need to replicate the work that taxpayers already paid for drawing from national security cases, but it is drawing from other high profile sex trafficking cases.
On Tuesday, Judge Valerie Caproni, who is presiding over the prosecution of the Alexander brothers — who are accused of trafficking seven women and a girl (with more victims accusing the brothers) using means not that dissimilar from Epstein’s modus operandi — laid into prosecutors for delays in turning over discovery for a trial currently due to start this month.
On Tuesday, another federal judge in the Southern District of New York told prosecutors to hold off of the Epstein assignment to focus on another marquee sex crime prosecution: the case of Oren, Alon and Tal Alexander — a trio of wealthy brothers in real estate accused of using their status to rape and traffic dozens of women.
With that case set to head to trial later this month, U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni told prosecutors that they need to focus on expeditiously sending over discovery materials.
“A few people can be strung from the Epstein case given that these people are on trial,” said the Obama appointee. “Epstein is dead.”
See InnerCity Press’ live tweeting here.
So here’s how Pam Bondi has used the resources at DOJ.
DOJ has been firing or chasing out personnel — about 5,500 people, according to Justice Connection, not all of them lawyers — since Trump started. A great many of those ousted were ousted, whether by choice or firing, because they refused to pursue Trump’s unethical weaponization.
That’s not good enough, Trump said last week. He needs the hollowed out DOJ to pursue his enemies faster.
Meanwhile, Pam Bondi is so incompetent or corrupt, she has to replicate work she already did, reviewing the Epstein files. 1,000 FBI personnel last March, 580 attorneys now. As a result, she’s neglecting current sex trafficking prosecutions.
And we have yet to tally what the impact of the reassignment of attorneys who focus on real national security issues. Many of them are chasing Stephen Miller’s fever dreams.
Part of me wonders why the Alexander brothers case wasn’t made a priority under the ‘see we DO prosecute sex traffickers’ theory. Of course Convict-1 has an image problem there because of his kid love treatment of the Tate brothers as well as, ahem, You-Know-Who ‘E”.
Alternately, would they have been charged under Trump?
I also have to wonder if there are personal Trump connections – the Alexander’s being top Miami real estate players.
Bingo.
GLOVE not love.
I almost spit my coffee out. I had read it as glove and didn’t realize it said love until you pointed it out.
One of the best Freudian slips/autocorrects I’ve seen in a long time. Not what you meant but you’re not wrong either.
Spot on!
misquoting Curtis Mayfield:
I’ll go with corrupt. I don’t think she is replicating work she already did – I think she got caught lying about work she claimed to have done, and now actually has to do the work.
She definitely did the work–my link there is to Jason Leopold’s FOIA work.
The work was just pursuing a different goal, figuring out where DOJ could find a political advantage.
Different goal = different work. She wasn’t doing the work she claimed, and that’s going to bite her in the butt the longer this takes.
The DOJs whole “presumption of regularity” is taking a beating, nowhere more than with the Epstein files.
Given what has already been revealed, combined with the increasingly desperate angles taken by DoJ, Comer and the WH to blame Ds I can’t fathom what possible exonerating information could exist to help Convict-1 in his association with BFF Epstein. It’s why we’re getting crises created everywhere else.
Michael Popok over at Legal AF has been pointing out the numbers where the 5.2 million docs are now around 2 million according to updated court filings by DoJ, so there is likely to be some serious shredding going on in addition to the well-documented use of no-evidence platforms like Signal and personal phones. Perhaps we should call Ollie North as an expert on the process of making inconvenient truths disappear.
Then again, many docs do exist in court files and other places like the Epstein estate, so there is only sa far the DoJ can go without challenge. I expect to see more concrete action by the survivors as well after they warned DoJ that they can talk, too.
I would have thought the DoJ had amply demonstrated over the last year why the usual presumption of regularity should no longer be applied to its communications and filings with federal courts.
I’m also gonna go with corruption, but of a slightly different nature:
I think the first pass-through Bondi ordered was simply to scrub Trump’s name and highlight Bill Clinton’s. But I suspect THIS review effort is a rolling blackout of other high-profile individuals, provided they buy a little TrumpCoin.
*ouch*
And I thought I was cynical. But IMHO you are likely on the right track. There might (must?) be at least a double digit amount of folk with dirty laundry they do not want aired.
Reply to Rugger_9 Jan 16 / 10:48 AM
Regarding the #s of documents:
Sometime in the last week or so, I heard Andy McCabe (on MSW “Justified” podcast) address the increasing # of documents. He said in his experience that it is not uncommon for there to be multiple copies as they pull documents from various offices and sections. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if a good percentage are duplicates. Something to consider when the # decrease again. At least it may be one factor.
Speaking of the presumption of regularity, comments from factory workers again concerning Trump’s personal emanations. And this in a factory full of welding, various lubricants and glues, etc.
Regarding Epstein, does anyone have any insight as to the truthfulness of the extraordinary Sascha Riley tapes. It hasn’t hit mainstream media(yet?), but seemingly verifiable incidents in his accounts will soon be either news, verified BS, or scrubbed by the powers that be.
Rachelandthecity (one word), goes through some of that in her substack.
She does a timeline of the claims to point out that much or most of the claims couldn’t be possible.
Any effort requiring 1000 agents and then 580 attorneys (insert # of number of light bulbs being changed here) will require some detailed instructions, which should be both FOIA’ble and subject to subpoenas and Congressional oversight. Bondi should be losing sleep because either she trusts EVERY SINGLE ONE of those 1580 people with her life, or she can’t issue two set of instructions.
That’s also a lot of people to not have strict guidance about what’s in or out. We know from Round 1 (the thousand feebs) that it was a relatively clean sort and (probably) replace operation, but it was somewhat slapdash with many errors. This one will be more thorough but as noted above, Convict-1’s BFF status and already well documented antics will make a complete scrub impossible.
It’s too many people to not have a document, not that we’ll see an official FOIA copy, and FWIW I can’t see the moral character of the minions being such that leaks wouldn’t happen either. We see leaks everywhere else, even in DHS with its memos.
I worked on a project where we were taking written docs and putting them in a database. We had a written manual that was updated as needed. We got updates on paper, and had meetings to make sure everyone *heard* about the changes.
If DOJ isn’t doing that much, it’s because they don’t want the stuff to come out at all.
He needs the hollowed out DOJ to pursue his enemies faster.
Read that sentence and immediately thought of the film “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” Maybe he should require Pam Bondi to watch it, for inspiration…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster,_Pussycat!_Kill!_Kill!
The CECOT sex trafficker is in the house, the White House.
I’ve reached the conclusion that, as long as the admin is in power, we will never see more than a fraction of the Epstein files.
Delay,delay,delay. They have perfected the technique
Rayne, while typing this (previously), I hit a wrong key typing my email address. I got a white screen to type a valid address, but the ‘back’ button didn’t work and the site was locked. I had to re-open emptywheel. I don’t think this is the way that the ‘back’ was designed to work.
Keep beating the drum for Epstein Files everyone, please.
It seems to lead to far more than sex trafficking.
Yes. Russia yet again, for example.
The #1 problem MAGA has is that they bought into the lie that 99% of Americans agree with them because everyone they know is MAGA and the left is just a tiny fringe of college students and paid activists propped up by the Liberal Media and Big Tech and funded by the Democratic Party to appear as a majority party while rigging every election. That’s what they say because that’s what they believe.
The people who invented this lie knew better but we’re stuck with the suckers who believed it. And in fact, this is the scam that Republicans have pulled on righties so their 25% can still compete in national elections where getting 32% of registered voters is enough to win the White House. And they’re still doing Karl Rove’s 2004 strategy of dividing the country and assuming their side is bigger.
The main goal of Trump domestically as set by his handlers was to create bait to lure the 1% of lefties into the open like we’re rats getting cheese from a trap and they could catch us all including the Deep Staters who would otherwise undermine them from within. And as they see increasingly more protesters showing up everywhere they go and more government employees quit, they think they’re even more successful at baiting us than they imagined and not that these are normal Americans being radicalized by what they’re doing.
These people also can’t comprehend how trying to kill terrorists in Iraq radicalized more Iraqis into becoming terrorists or how racism makes oppressed minorities more likely to turn to crime to survive. People are conservatives because they think nothing ever changes since everything is naturally perfect without human intervention and if someone does something bad it’s because they were born bad and you should have imprisoned/killed them before they had a chance to do bad. And lefties aren’t trying to fix society, they criticize society to tear it down. There is no Cause & Effect. Life is static and should always remain static.
The truth:
source: https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-voters-have-a-party-affiliation/
This only addresses the folks who identify as one of two parties. The US is and has been a center-left country but gerrymandering, other forms of voter suppression, and the composition of the Senate ensure the left is underrepresented.
The largest corporate-owned news media outlets ensure the public’s perception is skewed away from the truth reflected in these numbers, as well as other truths like “the US is a partially socialized economy from which conseratives benefit.” The same information skew ensures bias at the polls as well as the stickiness of voter suppression.
This situation isn’t going to break until we can crack the right-wing information ecosystem disrupting the firehose of bullshit.
This is pretty much what I think. My focus is usually on the so-called smart conservatives, of whom there are a few. I wonder how they think their ideas will make things better, because I don’t see that happening.
I wonder if they have other goals, and are willing to sacrifice human decency to reach them.
So a thousand people have now seen parts of this. Many of who are surely not happy about doing it. While 10,000 people have kept their mouths shut about the fake moon landing 57 years ago I’m thinking some of this stuff is going to leak.
Is it time to begin asking, “Is Stephen Miller in the Epstein files?” Marco Rubio? Not that the likelihood is great for either being there, but asking such stuff tightens the lasso to – if it’s not these administration people too, then is it Trump alone being the only reason such foot dragging and non-disclosure is happening?
Just another way to question and shape a focus. And – for all I know Miller might be there. A role in setting the Epstein honey pot trap, or keeping it going, or cooking the sweetheart plea deal. In that sense, where is Acosta now, doing what?
I think both are doubtful, since the timeline doesn’t work well for either until very late. Either they weren’t in play as rich marks for targeting or they weren’t Epstein friends.
It would be interesting to know just how much of the government has been hollowed out. I met someone who works as an office manager for an agency that was, supposedly, not touched by DOGE. He recently transferred to be office manager of a sizable division but when he got there, he was the only person on the staff.
The final report on DOGE will be devastating, if it ever happens and if it is anything more than a cursory examination since I’m thinking proper records were not kept and the private information sucked up by DOGE has probably migrated into the ether. The damage DOGE did in less than a year will haunt us for decades and that is only DOGE not the entire Trmp maladministration.
Is there anything preventing DOJ from releasing the docs that have been reviewed? Or prioritizing the release of docs of obvious interest such as the memo from AUSA Villafranca which discussed money laundering?
The obvious answer is that Bondi is slow walking the release.