21 hours ago
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Since the uproar started over the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case files, one question White House watchers have been asking is when and who will be thrown overboard, taking the blame for the whole debacle.
The “who” is perhaps less of a mystery, as at the center of the entire mess since she was sworn into office as President Donald Trump’s attorney general, is Pam Bondi.
In a new column for The Daily Beast, longtime D.C. insider Eleanor Clift writes that Bondi is in a “particularly precarious position,” as she is most connected to the reversal pulled on Trump’s MAGA base from promising to release the Epstein files to saying there was nothing more to make public and no more prosecutions would follow.
This, of course, came via the highly publicized repackaging of already public information relating to the case of the late sex offender; the promise that his client list, which now apparently doesn’t exist, was on her desk; and the decision alongside the FBI to release an unsigned memo at the end of a holiday weekend, saying there would be no more revelations.
Since then, there has been uproar in MAGAworld, where conspiracy theories have long been peddled about the circumstances of Epstein’s death in prison while awaiting trial, his client list, and an international cabal of pedophiles.
Notably, these conspiracies were spread by members of the current administration, including FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, as well as the president himself, who has appeared less than committed to releasing the files, given his longtime friendship with Epstein.
The base doesn’t want to turn on Trump, but has certainly been angered by the actions of the administration he leads, meaning possibly the only way to absolve himself of responsibility is to fire someone and make them take the blame.
“It’s like ‘The Apprentice’ taking place in the White House with Cabinet secretaries and top officials knowing that in order to survive they better do anything they can to please him, even when it’s not in the best interest of the American people,” Michael Sozan, a senior fellow in governance, democracy and ethics at liberal think tank the Center for American Progress, told The Daily Beast.
He noted that Bondi brought in conspiracy theorists Patel and Bongino to the Department of Justice to run the FBI. Those hires might be something Trump “foisted upon her,” Sozan said, “but she still sits at the apex of the decision-making. I don’t see how she successfully gets out of this.”
For now, though, Bondi still has Trump’s support.
As to what might trigger the end of Bondi’s tenure, Clift notes that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard “is also vulnerable — expendable, even.”
Gabbard fell out of grace with Trump for making statements that didn’t align with his, specifically about Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and is now trying to reingratiate herself with the president by pushing what critics have said is a “phony treason case” against former President Barack Obama and his advisers to distract from the furore over the Epstein files.
The DNI’s sudden release of the Obama “treason” plot and criminal referral to the Department of Justice is said to have “blindsided” Bondi, but has pleased the president, who has repeated the allegations to the press on several occasions. However, it has not distracted from the Epstein case.
“If the boss is happy, he doesn’t care about anything else,” Bill Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the non-partisan Brookings Institution, told The Daily Beast.
“My sense is he’s delighted to have Bondi and Gabbard in a bit of trouble, so they work harder to please him.”
If Bondi cannot put together a viable case against former President Obama, which some analysts have said seems unlikely, she might be seen as having dropped the ball, further angering the base and allowing Gabbard to appear as having done what she needed to do, perhaps saving her own skin.
If there is an investigation into the allegations against Obama, with numerous subpoenas concerning matters already covered in previous investigations, and without any actionable indictments, this could drag on for some time, yet ultimately prove fruitless.
Addressing the comparison between the imperiled Bondi and Gabbard, and embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose six months in the job have been marked by mishaps, including sharing classified information in a Signal group chat that inadvertently included a journalist from The Atlantic, Clift notes a significant difference.
The calamities that have beset Hegseth do not implicate Trump; they merely highlight his perceived unsuitability for the job, something that he seems to be accepting. According to reports, he is considering a run for governor of Tennessee as an exit strategy from his current role.
Clift describes this as Hegseth having the ability to “fail upwards,” but says Bondi and Gabbard won’t get such an agreeable exit, “should they fail to get Trump out of the scrape he’s in.”
