Pam Bondi Loses It After Being Asked to Apologize to Epstein Victims

Attorney General Pam Bondi refused Wednesday to face the victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking empire after her department inappropriately revealed several of their identities in the latest document release.

Seated before members of the House Judiciary Committee, Bondi dodged and deflected attempts by Democrats to recognize the victims seated directly behind her.

“The Epstein Files Transparency Act required your Department of Justice to disclose the perpetrators connected with Epstein’s criminal activities and to redact the information of survivors to protect their identities,” Washington Representative Pramila Jayapal said. “Let me show you what actually happened.”

Referring to a large poster board behind her displaying some of the emails released by the DOJ, Jayapal highlighted that Bondi’s agency had actually done the opposite of what was required. In addition to concealing the identities of Epstein’s associates, the department failed to shield the identities of some 32 victims, “along with numerous files that disclose not only the names, emails, and addresses of survivors, but also nude photographs and even the identities of Jane Does who had been protected for decades until your department released their names.”

Jayapal noted that, for some of the victims, the DOJ’s release was the first time that their families had heard that they were trafficked by Epstein.

“For the survivors in the room, if you are willing, please stand,” Jayapal urged. “And if you are willing, please raise your hands if you have still not been able to meet with the DOJ.”

All of the victims present raised their hands.

“Attorney General Bondi. You apologized to the survivors in your opening statement for what they went through at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein. Will you turn to them now and apologize for what your Department of Justice has put them through with the absolutely unacceptable release of the Epstein files and their information?” Jayapal pressed.

But Bondi would not. Instead, she decided to bring up former Attorney General Merrick Garland, though it was not clear why she did so.

“This is not about anybody that came before you, it is about you taking responsibility for your Department of Justice and the harm that it has done to the survivors right behind you,” Jayapal said, her voice beginning to break.

Bondi mentioned Garland again, but Jayapal insisted she answer the question.

“I’m not going to get in the gutter for her theatrics,” Bondi sneered.

FBI Director Kash Patel has once again prematurely announced a major update in a criminal investigation, only to have to walk it back hours later. 

Police detained and questioned a person of interest on Tuesday night regarding the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie, who was taken from her Arizona home over a week ago. New security camera footage released by the FBI  shows masked men on the front porch of Guthrie’s home the night she disappeared, but she still remains missing.

On Tuesday, Patel went on Fox News with Sean Hannity and touted the FBI’s “brilliant” relationship with private-sector companies that allowed them to make “substantial progress in these last 36 [to] 48 hours. 

“And I do believe we are looking at people who, as we say, are persons of interest,” he continued. At least one of those “persons” appears to be a completely innocent man.

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department, supported by Patel’s FBI, detained a man who identified himself as Carlos at a traffic stop in Tucson on Tuesday. He was released the same day, and later spoke to reporters outside his home, profusely proclaiming his innocence. 

“[It was] terrifying. Something I didn’t do … I felt like I was being kidnapped bro. They didn’t tell me anything at the beginning,” Carlos said, visibly shaken as his voice wavered. He said he was followed, detained at random, and questioned about his “whereabouts” and personal information by police. He was “held against his will” and says he wasn’t read his Miranda rights until two hours into his detainment.

“Are you ever up in Tucson?” a reporter asked Carlos. 

“I work in Tucson … GLS, deliver packages,” he replied. 

“Do you think you might have delivered a package to Nancy Guthrie’s house?” 

“I don’t know, might’ve been a possibility.”

Carlos, answering questions in both English and Spanish, later stated that he had no idea who Guthrie even was, and that he didn’t watch the Today show.

“I hope they get the suspect. Because I’m not it. And they better do their job and find the suspect that did it so they can clear my name. And I’m done. Look at what I’m putting my family through,” he continued. “Not just them, but my parents in Tucson.”

Detaining and interrogating a random person before throwing them out the door has become a pattern for the Patel FBI in high-profile investigations. 

Last September, Patel came under fire from the left and right for his premature social media post the day Charlie Kirk was shot, declaring that “the subject for the horrific shooting” was in custody—a claim almost immediately contradicted by local officials. Patel later backtracked, and the manhunt ensued for another 27-plus hours before the suspect, Tyler Robinson, was turned in by a family member. 

And in December, the FBI director wrote a long post boasting about the bureau’s efforts to detain another person of interest in the Brown University shooting that killed two and wounded nine. Blunders like these are only magnified under a bureau now left to the whims of Patel, who insists on force and bravado that does not match his success rate.

Gregory Bovino praised the agent who shot Chicago resident and U.S. citizen Marimar Martinez five times in an October email newly released by federal prosecutors Tuesday.

Bovino, who was leading Border Patrol at the time, wrote, “In light of your excellent service in Chicago, you have much yet left to do!!” to Charles Exum, who shot Martinez, and other federal agents in the city.

The government had assembled text messages from Exum as part of evidence in an attempt to prosecute Martinez, a U.S. citizen and teacher’s assistant. Exum had screenshot the email and sent it in a text to a family member. Prosecutors ended up dropping their case against Martinez after her attorneys raised questions about the mishandling of evidence.

On the day of the shooting, Exum texted his fellow agents that “she was trying to run me over.” Other text messages from Exum’s phone show praise from his fellow agents, with one of them calling him “a legend among agents.”

Exum also claimed in his text messages that Bovino passed along congratulations from high-ranking members of the executive branch. A member of a group text asked Exum, “Are they supportive?”

Exum replied, “Big time. Everyone has been including Chief Bovino, Chief Banks, Sec Noem and El Jefe himself … according to Bovino.”

That would seem to indicate that President Trump supported an agent who bragged, “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys,” after shooting a U.S. citizen. Bovino has already lost his job due to his conduct in Minneapolis following his supervision of violence in Chicago. Will any other federal agents—and the people in the White House who gave them such extraordinary power—face any consequences?

At the eleventh hour, a trio of Republicans decided the president’s tariff program is worth questioning.

Representatives Thomas Massie, Kevin Kiley, and Don Bacon voted alongside Democrats late Tuesday, rejecting a rule that would have blocked future efforts by Congress to challenge economic tariffs enacted by the White House. The final vote was 217–214.

Their sudden position change came hours after Donald Trump casually admitted—or perhaps boasted—to Fox News that his global levies were motivated by power and retribution.

“You know, I had an incident with a very nice country, Switzerland,” Trump said. “They were paying no tariffs when sending stuff over here like nobody could believe, and we had a $42 billion deficit and we weren’t taking anything.”

“So I put on a 30 percent tariff, which is very low. Still we were having a big deficit, but it was after,” he continued.

Trump then said he received an “emergency” phone call with Swiss leader Karin Keller-Sutter, a member of the country’s seven-member Federal Council and chief of the country’s Department of Finance. Trump, however, mistakenly referred to her as the country’s prime minister.

“She was very aggressive but nice, but very aggressive. She said, ‘Sir, we are a small country. We can’t do this. We can’t do this.’ I couldn’t get her off the phone,” Trump told Fox. “I said, ‘You may be a small country, but we have a $42 billion deficit with you.’”

“And I didn’t really like the way she talked to us and so instead of giving her a reduction, I raised it to 39 percent,” Trump said.

“But I realized: You know Switzerland, you think of it as ultra-chic, ultra-perfect. They’re not. They are only that because we allow them to rip us off and make all this money,” he added.

The tiny Republican coalition’s revolt signals that the House is not so willing to hand over the country’s purse strings to the executive branch, even if 214 conservative lawmakers voted in favor of doing so.

The opening gives Democrats the opportunity to challenge and officially disapprove of Trump’s economic agenda. That includes the chance to force a vote “as soon as this week” on a resolution that would object to his 25 percent levy on Canadian products.

Bacon, one of the three conservatives to side with Democrats on the issue, in part seemed motivated by Trump’s recent dealings with America’s northern neighbor.

“We have a trade agreement with them, and I don’t like how the White House has treated our neighbor and ally,” Bacon told Politico Monday.

Donald Trump’s outrageous threat to close a new bridge between Michigan and Canada appears to have been at the behest of a billionaire who operates another bridge between the two countries.

Just hours before Trump published a scattered tirade Monday night against the new Gordie Howe International Bridge, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with Matthew Moroun, whose family operates the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, two officials told The New York Times Tuesday.

Moroun’s family has spent years mounting legal challenges against the new six-lane bridge, which threatens to dilute trade across the Ambassador Bridge. After the meeting, Lutnick called Trump and the two discussed the matter, officials told the Times.

Shortly after their call, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would block the Gordie Howe opening unless Canada “fully compensated” America “for everything” and gives him what he wants: “at least half” ownership of the bridge.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was forced to clarify that Michigan already has an ownership stake in the bridge, and that—despite Trump claiming otherwise—the construction was made with U.S. steel and labor.

Speaking at a White House press briefing Tuesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that the sudden opposition to the bridge was “just another example of President Trump putting America’s interests first.”

Rather, it’s just another example of Trump apparently taking orders from billionaires.

The Department of Justice tried and failed to indict Democrats in Congress who made a video urging troops not to obey illegal orders. Now the legislators are triumphant, but also furious. 

A federal grand jury on Tuesday refused to indict the members of Congress in the video: Representative Jason Crow, Senator Mark Kelly, Representative Maggie Goodlander, Senator Elissa Slotkin, Representative Chris Deluzio, and Representative Chrissy Houlahan. It’s not clear if all the lawmakers or only some of them were referred to the grand jury, but they’re all pissed.

“Tonight we can score one for the Constitution, our freedom of speech, and the rule of law,” Slotkin said in a post on X Tuesday.  

Kelly, a former Navy captain who has also been targeted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, called the attempted indictment an “outrageous abuse of power.”  

“It wasn’t enough for Pete Hegseth to censure me and threaten to demote me, now it appears they tried to have me charged with a crime—all because of something I said that they didn’t like. That’s not the way things work in America,” the Arizona senator said in a statement. 

On X, Deluzio said, “I will not be intimidated for a single second by the Trump Administration or Justice Department lawyers who tried and failed to indict me today.” 

Crow said that Americans “should be appalled by the fact that Donald Trump and his goons at Department of Justice and everywhere else are weaponizing their justice system just to try to silence dissent and to crush political opponents.” 

“Not only should Americans be angry at that—they have chosen the wrong people. If these fuckers think that they’re going to intimidate us and threaten and bully me into silence, and they’re going to go after political opponents and get us to back down, they have another thing coming,” Crow said, adding that the “tide is turning” with Americans “rising up against the corruption and the rank abuse of this administration.” 

In a statement on X, Houlahan said, “This is good news for the Constitution and the free speech protections it guarantees. The grand jury upheld the rule of law—this is a win for all Americans.” 

Goodlander vowed in a statement that “no matter the threats, I will keep doing my job and upholding my oath to our Constitution.” 

President Trump had accused the lawmakers of sedition “punishable by death” simply for exercising their First Amendment rights. Now it seems that he and the DOJ wanted to prosecute them as some kind of petty attempt to prevent criticism of his administration’s disregard for the law. While it failed this time, how much further will Trump go in breaking the law and punishing those who point it out? 

The Federal Aviation Administration will now reopen the El Paso Texas Airport and surrounding airspace, after initially planning to close it for 10 days, a bizarre reversal of an even more bizarre move that would have a massive negative impact on the communities and businesses in the region.

“The temporary closure of airspace over El Paso has been lifted,” the FAA wrote on X Wednesday morning. “There is no threat to commercial aviation. All flights will resume as normal.”

But the FAA had just said late Tuesday that the flight restrictions were being imposed for “special security reasons.”

A Trump administration official told NBC News on Wednesday that the planned 10-day closure was actually because Mexican cartel drones had entered U.S. airspace, but they have since been disabled.

There has been no additional explanation for the decision—or the sudden reversal—but there were multiple theories about why Trump’s FAA would halt all aviation activity above this southern border town of 700,000.

Other possibilities that were floated included a planned military action or exercise, a credible security threat, or a very sensitive package or person that needed to be transported.

“Important context: the El Paso TFR is not like the 9/11 nationwide airspace shutdown. DC & NY restrictions were created later,” CNN’s Pete Muntean said. “A ban on all flights over a U.S. city—including medevac and police helicopters—has no modern precedent.”

What could have merited shutting down a major airport—and a hub of U.S.-Mexico trade—for 10 whole days?

“The highly consequential decision by FAA to shut down the El Paso Airport for 10 days is unprecedented and has resulted in significant concern within the community,” said Representative Veronica Escobar, who represents the El Paso region. “From what my office and I have been able to gather overnight and early this morning there is no immediate threat to the community or surrounding areas.”

This story has been updated.

Yet another member of the American Olympic team has chosen to call out the state-sponsored violence taking place back home.

Richard Ruohonen—a member of the U.S. curling team from Minnesota—separated his love for his countrymen from the government Tuesday, telling reporters that while he’s “proud to represent Team USA” and the country, he did not condone the actions of ICE and the rest of the Trump administration in his home state.

“What’s happening in Minnesota is wrong,” Ruohonen said, citing the Bill of Rights and his 28 years of experience as an attorney. “There’s no shades of gray. It’s clear.

“I really love what’s been happening there now, with people coming out, showing the love, the compassion, integrity, and respect for others that they don’t know, and helping them out. And we love Minnesota for that,” he continued. “I want to make it clear: We are out here, we love our country. We’re playing for the U.S., we’re playing for Team USA, and we’re playing for each other, and we’re playing for our family and our friends that sacrificed so much to get here today.

“What the Olympics means is excellence, respect, friendship. And we all, I think, exemplify that,” Ruohonen added. “And we are playing for the people of Minnesota and the people around the country who share those same values, that compassion, that love, and that respect.”

In standing up to address the injustices taking place across America, Ruohonen effectively placed a target on his back. Within minutes, MAGA-aligned social media influencers were busy tearing him apart, arguing that Ruohonen should stay in Italy, that there should be censors placed on the U.S team, and that the curling team’s sponsors should be boycotted.

But he’s not the first U.S. athlete to announce their discontent with the state of the country. On Sunday, Donald Trump referred to Olympic freestyle skier Hunter Hess as a “loser” after Hess candidly expressed to reporters that he had “mixed emotions” representing the U.S. in the current climate.

“It’s a little hard; there’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren’t,” Hess said at a news conference Friday. “I think for me it’s more I’m representing my friends and family back home … all the things I believe are good about the U.S.”

Hess’s teammate, Chris Lillis, took his criticism a step further.

“I feel heartbroken about what’s happened in the United States. I’m pretty sure you’re referencing ICE and some of the protests,” Lillis said. “I think that, as a country, we need to focus on respecting everybody’s rights and making sure that we’re treating our citizens, as well as anybody, with love and respect.… I hope that when people look at athletes [competing] in the Olympics, they realize that that’s the America that we’re trying to represent.”

Representative Jamie Raskin has claimed that President Trump is named over a million times in the unredacted Epstein files.

“The idea that we could get through a meaningful fraction of them is just ridiculous,” he told Axios Tuesday, after viewing the unredacted files a day earlier. “I mean, there’s tons of redacted stuff.… And [Trump’s] name, I think I put his name, and it appears more than a million times. So it’s all over the place.

“To me, this whole rollout of saying that members can come from nine to five to sit at those four computers, is just part of the coverup,” Raskin continued.

“If this is true, it would mean the Department of Justice redacted more than 96% of the mentions of Trump,” MS NOW’s Matt Fuller wrote.

“Unfortunately the GOP set the line for removal at 2 million mentions,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s press office quipped.

The DOJ’s release of the files has been extremely contentious, as it redacted the names of multiple associates and potential co-conspirators of Epstein for no apparent reason, while revealing identifying information about the victims.

One of the more notable files that Raskin and other Democrats who viewed the unredacted files have pointed to is an email chain between Epstein and his primary accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, in which Epstein details a phone call between his lawyers and Trump.

“Trump is paraphrased and quoted as saying, ‘No, Jeffrey Epstein was not a member of Mar-a-Lago, but he was a guest at Mar-a-Lago, and no, we never asked him to leave,’” Raskin told reporters on Monday. The exchange is from 2009—two years after Trump supposedly kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago.

A 23-year-old British woman was reportedly shot and killed by her father after arguing with him about Donald Trump.

New testimony offered as part of a coroner’s inquest Tuesday shed more light on the death of Lucy Harrison, who was fatally shot in January last year while visiting her father, Kris Harrison, in a suburb outside of Dallas.

Lucy Harrison’s boyfriend, Sam Littler, who had traveled with her to Texas for the holidays, told an inquest at Cheshire Coroner’s Court that the day the couple was expected to return to the United Kingdom, Harrison and her father got into “quite a big argument.”

He noted that Harrison’s father had previously been to rehab for alcohol abuse issues and that Lucy would often get upset with her father over his gun ownership. But their argument on January 10, 2025, wasn’t about guns—it was about Trump.

Littler recounted that Harrison had asked her father: “How would you feel if I was the girl in that situation and I’d been sexually assaulted?”

Harrison’s father replied that it wouldn’t upset him much considering that he had two other daughters who lived with him, Littler recalled.

A few hours later, Harrison’s father led her into the ground floor bedroom—and then Littler heard a loud bang. “I remember running into the room and Lucy was lying on the floor near the entrance to the bathroom and Kris was just screaming, just sort of nonsense,” Littler said.

It’s not entirely clear what specific “situation” Harrison was referring to in her argument with her father, but Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by so many women, he once tried to to defend himself by invoking his high rate of accusations after he was found liable for sexual abuse. Trump has also appeared tens of thousands of times in the most recent release of Epstein files.

Harrison’s father was not present at the inquest Tuesday, but in a statement sent to court, he claimed that he’d relapsed on alcohol, drinking an entire bottle of white wine. He claimed that he’d been inspired to show his daughter his Glock 9mm semiautomatic handgun after the two had watched a news segment about gun crime.

“As I lifted the gun to show her I suddenly heard a loud bang. I did not understand what had happened. Lucy immediately fell,” he said. American authorities have previously said they did not intend to press charges related to Harrison’s death.

If Harrison’s death was indeed the result of their earlier argument about Trump, it wouldn’t be the first time the president has been invoked by someone committing or threatening a violent act.