On Friday, Donald Trump demanded via social media that his Attorney General Pam Bondi investigate Bill Clinton and other Democrats mentioned in the Epstein files. Bondi—who does exactly as commanded by Trump—quickly jumped into action, announcing a few hours later that she had appointed a federal prosecutor to conduct that very investigation.
But what we truly need is an investigation into Pam Bondi. Specifically, why didn’t she investigate Jeffrey Epstein for the countless sex crimes he committed against children and women in Florida when she served as Florida’s Attorney General?!
Taking a step back, when Bondi served for eight years as Florida’s top law enforcement officer, she very publicly declared that investigating and prosecuting sexual predators—especially those who preyed on children–a top priority. Indeed, as Florida’s AG, she announced an initiative focused on “Making Florida a Zero-Tolerance state for Human trafficking.”
To that end, in 2013 she proudly boasted about the arrest of 15 child sex predators as part of a five-day investigation known as Operation e-Guardian. At the time, Bondi stated, “Sadly, sexual predators will use any means available to them, including the Internet, to lure children in order to exploit them. This operation was a great multi-agency collaboration that has brought down 15 child predators.”
And in 2018, Bondi launched a confidential tip website for people to report allegations of past child sex abuse by Catholic priests in Florida. She stated then that any “priest that would exploit a position of power and trust to abuse a child is a disgrace to the church and a threat to society.” Bondi added, “I am calling on victims and anyone with information about potential abuse to please report it to my office.”
Yet despite this very public commitment to investigate and bring to justice people involved in sex crimes against children—even those committed years earlier–she never announced an investigation into or prosecuted Jeffrey Epstein. (At least no investigation that was publicly reported.)
To be clear, Epstein’s crimes were well known in Florida given the media coverage surrounding his 2008 guilty plea to two relatively minor crimes. There’s no doubt Bondi knew about that as well as the grave injustice of Epstein getting a sweetheart deal from GOP US Attorney Alex Acosta that ignored the wishes of the victims.
Again in 2015—when Bondi was Florida’s AG—national headlines were made when Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre filed documents in a Florida court against Epstein alleging he sexually abused and trafficked her to powerful men, including Prince Andrew, when she was a minor. That reporting included quotes from a 2007 federal prosecutor’s letter that placed the crimes squarely in Bondi’s jurisdiction, stating, “Epstein, through his assistants, would recruit underage females to travel to his home in Palm Beach to engage in lewd conduct in exchange for money.” That letter further noted that the earlier investigations included “accounts from around 40 Florida girls who said they were molested by Epstein.”
Once again in 2018, The Miami Herald released a bombshell report that “identified about 80 people who say they were molested or otherwise sexually abused by Epstein.” We learned that the “girls — mostly 13 to 16 — were lured to [Epstein’s] pink waterfront mansion” in Palm Springs, Florida after being recruited at “shopping malls, house parties” and other locations.
If a newspaper like the Miami Herald could identify all those victims, certainly Bondi as the Attorney General of a large state like Florida had even more resources to locate these victims and investigate Epstein’s crimes. But only if she wanted to find out the crimes Epstein committed and who else was involved. Apparently, she did not.
We all also learned that after Epstein was released from prison in 2009, he returned to his lavish lifestyle and was able to “continue his abuse of minors.” That specific fact comes from Trump’s own DOJ by way of a 2020 report. That means crimes were still likely being committed in Florida when Bondi was AG.
Overall, we are talking about a massive sex ring with more than one thousand victims. We know that, ironically enough, by way of a July 2025 memo Bondi herself released that told us that the DOJ’s review of the files “confirmed that Epstein harmed over one thousand victims.”
Given all these facts, why didn’t Bondi enforce her goal of “Zero-tolerance” for human trafficking when it came to Epstein? Why didn’t she create a confidential tip line for victims of Epstein–the same way she had done for victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests?
One possible reason was that many powerful, politically connected men were involved in the Epstein sex ring. And, of course, one of those tied to Epstein was Trump—a big figure in Florida GOP politics at the time.
To be blunt, Bondi has been protecting Trump long before she served in the Trump regime. This is the same Bondi who in 2013 as Florida’s AG was considering investigating Trump University after her offices had received more than 20 complaints from Florida residents that they had been defrauded. However, we learned that just four days after Bondi’s office announced they were considering looking into Trump University, Trump’s charitable foundation wrote a $25,000 check to the Bondi-backing PAC. Bondi then decided to not investigate Trump.
Bondi has continued as U.S. Attorney General to fill the role as Trump’s top defender. She has fired career federal prosecutors who worked with Jack Smith to investigate Trump for his Jan. 6 coup and Espionage crimes. In July, Bondi refused to release any further documents related to the Epstein file—as Trump obviously wanted.
And in October, Bondi refused to answer questions in a Senate hearing when pressed by Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse about “public reporting that Jeffrey Epstein showed people photos of President Trump with half-naked young women.” Her response was not to address the substance but attack Whitehouse for making “salacious remarks.” And when the Senator further pressed her for an answer, she literally said nothing and just looked at Whitehouse until he commented, “You don’t know anything about that?”
At this point, there are vitally important questions about Bondi’s failure to investigate Epstein that must be answered. We deserve to know if there are good faith reasons fro why she made that choice or was it simply part of cover up to protect powerful men like Trump?!
Given Democrats don’t control either chamber of Congress, they can’t begin a formal investigation. But they can and must ask Bondi about this issue the next time she appears before congressional committees. Plus Democratic officials should be raising this issue in the media now in an effort to press corporate media to cover it.
The idea of investigating additional people in connection with Jeffrey Epstein is indeed needed. And that investigation needs to start with Pam Bondi.
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