Pam Bondi Throws Todd Blanche Under the Bus in Epstein Files Fiasco

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi threw acting Attorney General Todd Blanche under the bus during her closed-door testimony with the House Oversight Committee on Friday, stating that she “delegated oversight” over the disastrous release of the Epstein files to him.

“These investigations span FOUR administrations … The only time federal prosecutors were permitted to launch investigations against Epstein and Maxwell was when President Trump occupied the White House. Only under President Trump were 3 million Epstein-related documents released,” Bondi said in her prepared opening statement. “This was an enormously complicated and labor-intensive process. To the best of my knowledge, the Department produced everything required under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.”

“As the head of a large Department with broad responsibilities, I did not lead every aspect of this effort or conduct that document review myself. I delegated oversight over this process to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche,” Bondi continued, making sure to place as much possible blame on the man who replaced her after she was fired in April. “The team of professionals who reviewed all of the materials that we collected assured me the only materials that were withheld were either non-responsive, privileged, or duplicative. Although not required by the Act, the Department has given Congress access to unredacted, duplicative materials in the Reading Room in an effort at maximum transparency.”

Bondi’s assertion that the DOJ abided by the Epstein Transparency Act has been widely contested, as the department has withheld and heavily redacted thousands of files. Bondi admitted to the omissions herself, saying that there were “redaction errors.”

The DOJ’s handling of the Epstein files has been marked with nothing but chaos—from the moment Bondi backtracked on her own claim that she had a client list “sitting on [her] desk right now,” to when she paraded MAGA influencers around for a photo-op with big white binders labeled “The Epstein Files: PHASE 1,” to when the department released a bunch of blacked out files and told the MAGA base that there was nothing further incriminating at all.

Democratic Representative Robert Garcia called out Republicans on the House Oversight Committee for how they’re handling former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s testimony Friday.

Outside of the room where she is testifying, Garcia, the committee’s ranking member, pointed out that she was not sworn in under oath before her closed-door testimony, which is also not being videotaped.

“I just want to be very clear that we continue to be incredibly disappointed of the decision to not have this interview videotaped and then released to the American public. The second thing we asked [committee Chairman James Comer] is to ensure that this interview is under oath,” Garcia told reporters. “It should have been under oath, and it should be videotaped.”

Garcia said that he and other Democrats want to know why only 50 percent of the Jeffrey Epstein files have been released by the Department of Justice, why many of Epstein’s survivors were put in danger by the information that was released, and why “this continues to be some type of cover-up.”

It’s shocking that Bondi’s testimony, which was actually compelled by a congressional subpoena supported by both Democrats and Republicans, would neither be under oath nor videotaped for later release. Bondi’s testimony is only coming after she attempted to argue that the subpoena didn’t apply after she was fired as attorney general, leading Democrats to file contempt of Congress charges against her.

Comer has deliberately overhauled the committee’s hearing process to kill the Epstein investigation, removing the oath requirement as well as transparency measures. These changes have given Bondi an opportunity to escape accountability for how the DOJ has mishandled both the Epstein files and any follow-up investigations.

Representative Frederica Wilson is, actually, tapping out of her midterm race.

The 83-year-old Democrat announced Friday that her time representing Florida’s 24th congressional district will come to an end after her current term. In a sit-down interview with the Miami Herald, Wilson explained that while she’s decided not to run for reelection, she’s also not ready to retire.

“I think it’s time,” Wilson told the south Florida paper, explaining that she stayed in her position as long as she did in order to assist the 5000 Role Models program, a mentorship program she created for Black and brown boys in 1993.

Wilson disappeared for four weeks without explanation last month, missing 40 House votes in the process while sparking concerns among her constituents about the state of Wilson’s health. Earlier this month, the cowboy hat–wearing lawmaker revealed to WPLG Local 10 that eye surgery was the reason behind her spontaneous absence and that she required several weeks for the stitches to heal.

But Wilson had been privately musing about the possibility of ending her campaign, anyway. Multiple sources told Axios that Wilson made several calls on Saturday to people in her district about her plans to quit the race.

“She’s not running anymore—she’s going to retire,” one source told Axios.

Wilson adamantly denied the report, telling Axios in turn that her supposed exit was just a “crazy rumor.”

“A crazy, crazy rumor. I’m almost distraught. It’s not true. I am still planning on running,” Wilson said.

But the unidentified source doubled down, insisting to Axios that Wilson “called and made it known” that she is planning to retire and that she has already made the decision known to several legislators in her district.

Wilson confirmed to the Miami Herald that she had made her decision to exit the race a while ago—but needed to be “politically strategic” about sharing the news, in light of Florida’s recent redistricting.

“I figured if I announced that I was retiring, what would the Legislature and the governor do? What would they say? Would District 24 be an easy target because Frederica is no longer there? I’m a strong candidate,” Wilson said. “With me not here, would that weaken the survival of District 24?

Wilson’s district, which she has represented since 2013, encompasses the Miami-Dade area and Broward County. The area has a solid Democratic advantage, according to an analysis by the Cook Political Report.

Christine Sanon-Jules Olivo, a small-business owner with ties to the NAACP, is already lined up to replace Wilson in the district’s Democratic primary. But the race could soon be crowded: State Senator Shevrin Jones has also announced his interest in running for Wilson’s seat. The primary is scheduled for August 18.

For her part, Wilson said that she’s not quite ready to endorse her replacement.

“All of this rests on my shoulders. So I carried a lot, and it’s time to find someone who I can trust,” Wilson told the Herald. “I’m going to vet all these candidates to see who I can trust to carry this mission forward.”

CBS News chief Bari Weiss has hacked up 60 Minutes to the point that even show staffers have lost faith in the famed magazine show.

Weiss’s recent shakeup at 60 Minutes has involved the exit of several of the show’s major personalities, including correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi (who criticized Weiss’s decision to delay her report on a notoriously brutal CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador), correspondent Cecilia Vega, executive producer Tanya Simon, and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich. Correspondent Anderson Cooper left voluntarily.

To replace the top leadership, Weiss has installed former Vanity Fair writer Nick Bilton, who, like her, has next to no formal experience in broadcast journalism.

But 60 Minutes staffers don’t see Weiss’s aggressive restructuring as an optimistic new era for the program—instead, there’s a near-unanimous prediction that “it’s over.”

Status reported on the maelstrom behind the scenes, citing “more than half a dozen” staffers.

“They’re gutting us,” one 60 Minutes employee told Status. “It’s over. I don’t see how ‘60’ will be able to function after this.”

“Goodnight and good luck, motherfuckers,” they added.

Another senior staffer told Status that “everyone—100 percent thought Tanya and Draggan did exemplary jobs.”

“It hurts. We feel violated,” the senior staffer said.

Weiss’s tenure has so far lasted seven months, but her business decisions atop the news giant have unequivocally and single-handedly divorced CBS News from its decades-long place within America’s prestige news media circuit. What was once crowned the “gold standard” of broadcasting, and was the home of some of journalism’s most venerable names, such as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, has since devolved into a graveyard for journalism ethics.

In a statement shared with The New York Times, Vega said she “very much [fears] what comes next for and the future of the legendary broadcast.”

“In recent months, my producing teams and I have experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories,” Vega wrote. “Reporting teams have held back on submitting story pitches about important news topics out of fear of the internal repercussions.

“Let’s call this what it is: censorship, both imposed and self-driven. It is dangerous for the show and dangerous for democracy,” the George Polk Award–winning journalist noted.

But CBS’s parent company, Paramount, was ready and willing to sacrifice 60 Minutes long before that. The media conglomerate undermined itself by settling multimillion-dollar lawsuits with Donald Trump over the show’s 2024 Kamala Harris interview, in an apparent bid to butter up the administration ahead of a multibillion-dollar merger with SkyDance.

That resulted in the loss of two storied showrunners, including 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens and CBS News chief Wendy McMahon, who rejected Paramount’s approach to handling Trump’s groundless lawsuit.

Owens, who has largely remained out of the spotlight since leaving the show, shared his opinion on Weiss’s recent restructuring with Status. “They’re killing 60 Minutes,” he said.

President Trump can’t help gloating about his lone presidential debate with Joe Biden in June 2024 following former first lady Jill Biden’s revelations from that night in her upcoming memoir.

“Jill Biden is now out there finally admitting that she did NOT know what went wrong with Sleepy Joe during our spectacular, and highly rated, 2024 Presidential Debate, where Joe was not exactly performing to the highest level of debate standards,” Trump crowed on Truth Social Friday morning. “She said that she thought he was having a ‘stroke,’ and various other really bad things, and yet never rushed onto the stage to help her troubled husband, as any good wife would do.”

Trump went on to brag about his own performance during the debate, and say that the former first lady didn’t mention how well he was doing and whether his performance caused President Biden to “choke.”

In early reports about Jill Biden’s memoir, which is being released this week, it’s revealed that even she was concerned about that fateful evening when President Biden struggled to speak clearly and appear coherent in the face of attacks from Trump.

“Is he short-circuiting?” Jill Biden wrote according to a review by The Atlantic. “Is this a stroke? I felt like we were watching an AI hologram of the man we knew, and the hologram was glitching. Has he been drugged?” She questioned whether he took too much cough syrup or Ambien.

President Biden said that he was recovering from illness that evening, and while helping him prepare for the debate in the preceding weeks, his staff had built naps into his schedule to help him rest following two trips to Europe. It was all for nought, as he still looked and sounded unwell on the Las Vegas debate stage.

Ultimately, fallout from the poor debate performance led to Biden dropping out of the race one month later, and Vice President Kamala Harris was named the Democratic nominee. However, she would end up losing the presidential election in November, raising all kinds of questions as to whether Biden should have dropped out sooner, or made the decision not to run early enough to hold a Democratic primary.

Regardless, that was two years ago, but Trump can’t help reliving one of his greatest moments in the only election where he won the popular vote, because right now, his approval ratings are lower than they have ever been, and his presidency is floundering.