President Donald Trump on Saturday defended embattled Attorney General Pam Bondi, as he tries to quell a revolt among his MAGA base over Jeffrey Epstein.
“What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’” Trump posted to Truth Social, the social media site he owns, on Saturday afternoon. “They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening.”
Prominent allies of the president — including far-right commentator Laura Loomer — have called for Bondi to be fired over the administration’s handling of the investigation into Epstein, the disgraced financier who was convicted of sex crimes and died by suicide in his jail cell in 2019.
Trump and many of his allies — including Bondi, and now-FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino — entertained conspiracies about Epstein, particularly in the runup to the 2024 election.
Trump and his senior law enforcement officials had pledged to reveal the truth behind Epstein’s crimes and his death — promising to release a purported “client list,” that some believed would show that Epstein was blackmailing prominent elites, and entertaining the idea that he may have actually been killed to silence him.
But once in office, that all began to change — culminating in a statement from the Department of Justice and FBI put out earlier this week that said Epstein did, in fact, end his own life and that there was no incriminating client list.
“We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein. For years, it’s Epstein, over and over again,” Trump wrote on Saturday, insisting that any such files were actually written by Trump’s enemies in previous Democratic administrations.
Much of the post-release furor has focused on Bondi, after some MAGA commentators speculated that she was slow-walking the truth. The Trump administration has spent the last couple days furiously denying reports that Bongino — who regularly engaged in Epstein conspiracies as a podcaster — was considering resigning from his position after a fight with the attorney general.
“The conspiracy theories just aren’t true, never have been,” Patel wrote on X earlier Saturday. “It’s an honor to serve the President of the United States @realDonaldTrump — and I’ll continue to do so for as long as he calls on me.”
Trump suggested that his administration’s top law enforcement officials need to be done with Epstein, to instead focus on investigating “rigged” elections — another conspiracy theory that has animated both the president and his supporters.
“LET PAM BONDI DO HER JOB — SHE’S GREAT!” Trump wrote Saturday. “Let’s keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
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