Pam Bondi CAUGHT covering for Trump over Epstein

Pam Bondi CAUGHT covering for Trump over Epstein

You’re watching the legal breakdown. Glenn, there is a major question that everybody seems to be ignoring here as it relates to Pam Bondi and Donald Trump saying that they’re going to get all of this grand jury testimony uh from from the court. Is there anything that Pam Bondi does not already have that exists because of her position as as attorney general that she needs to go to a grand jury to a judge to to unseal? Brian, I hope our viewers will hear this loud and clear. Pam Bondi knows and has always known ever since she took over as attorney general every word in every grand jury transcript in the Jeffrey Epstein case. That’s why this whole thing is a Donald Trump Pam Bondi reality show apparently titled the Epstein files. Here is why this is just complete and utter nonsense. First of all, when were these grand jury transcripts created? Well, Jeffrey Epstein was investigated in 2019 by Bill Bar’s Department of Justice in Donald Trump’s first administration. So, Bill Bar and the DOJ lawyers serving under him were the ones who were deciding what witnesses to put before the grand jury. And Brian, does anybody believe that if there was information that incriminated Donald Trump, Bill Barr would have given his attorneys the following instructions? Okay, I want you to drill down on all of the evidence of Donald Trump’s crimes. I want you to put it in the grand jury. Preserve it under oath so it can be used to prosecute my boss, Donald Trump. Are you kidding me? Of course, they probably navigated their way through that. so as to protect Donald Trump. So, not only did the Bill Barr Department of Justice create these transcripts in the first instance, they also created the Gileain Maxwell transcripts because it was Bill Bar’s Department of Justice that investigated and indicted Maxwell in 2020. So, the same principle holds. And then Brian, these transcripts have always been in the hands of the Department of Justice, the prosecutors, the attorney general. Everybody has had them the entire time, ever since they were created in 2019 and 2020. So, you know, Pam Bondi is fully aware of what every witness said in the grand jury, and it feels like those witnesses were probably likely cherrypicked to just, you know, get the indictment against Epstein and Maxwell, but not get anywhere near Donald Trump. So, for Pam Bond, and Pam Bondi has undoubtedly briefed Donald Trump about all of this. So, let’s play this out. Can you imagine Pam Bondi in the Oval Office telling Donald Trump, “Well, you know, Mr. president. I’ve reviewed these transcripts and they they they really paint you in a bad light. They might get you in trouble. They say all kinds of horrible stuff about what you did together with Jeffrey Epstein. So, Donald Trump goes on his social media platform with his little fingers and posts, “Release them all.” Really? And then tells Pam Bondi, “Go to the judge in New York and seek an order, seek permission to release the Epstein grand jury transcripts.” This is an absolute absurdity. This is a show he’s putting on. Why? Because his base is fleeing from him. His base is turning on him because he promised that he would be releasing the Epstein files. You know, so many people in his administration have called for this previously. His FBI director, his deputy FBI director, his vice president for gosh sakes. And Pam Bondi said that the client list is on my desk and I’m preparing to review and release it until she said, “Whoops, it doesn’t even exist.” I mean, all of this is so absurd that I think it’s only likely to fool the really gullible. So, this feels like just a wild goose chase at this point because if Pam Bondi has all the information contained within the Epstein files, then what can the judge give her other than just a bunch of delay and a pretext to be able to say, “Oh, well, you know, we’ve done our due diligence. We look, we’re getting you transparency. We’re going to a judge. This is what you wanted.” Other than that, the the judge is not going to unseal any information that Pam Bondi does not already have. Correct. Yeah. So the only thing that needs to be unsealed are grand jury transcripts. The other 90% probably hundreds of thousands of documents and pieces of evidence, photographs, videotapes, DVDs, all of the really client lists, all of the really incriminating stuff that’s not protected by grand jury. The only thing we’re talking about here is probably a small fraction of the Epstein files made, you know, comprised of the actual grand jury testimony when the witnesses went in and provided limited testimony to the grand jury. So Pam Bondi by law can’t release that because that’s grand jury secrecy protected, but she could release everything else. Of course, she’s not going to. So, what does what does this get her filing this motion asking the judge to give her permission to release these transcripts? You’re absolutely right. It gives her delay because it’s probably going to take a long time for the judge to rule on this because, you know, you have very sensitive information in there about victims and about other folks who may be identified who perhaps don’t have any criminal exposure. And if the judge says, “Look, this isn’t really in keeping with the rules governing the release of grand jury material, so I deny your motion.” You know, Donald Trump will hide behind that and say, “Look, I wanted it all out there, even though we know now it’s not incriminating. I wanted it all out there, but a lunatic left-wing judge said no. So, it’s really the judge’s fault, not my fault.” So, this is nothing more than a show. Well, Glenn, that that raises the question, too. Even for that 10%, let’s say, and we’re just guessing a number here, but but those grand jury testimonies, doesn’t Pam Bondi already at least have summaries of of what those testimonies show? So, in in theory, we don’t need the exact testimonies because she even has that information at her disposal. She has the summaries. She, the Department of Justice, is the keeper of the transcript. So, she has access to all of the transcripts. You uh uh somebody inside the DOJ, a federal prosecutor. Listen, I I lived and breathed this stuff for decades. You don’t need permission of the court. You have the transcript. The transcript actually gets delivered to the prosecutor after the prosecutor puts the witness before the grand jury to testify. So, she’s got the transcript, she’s got the summaries. Um, so she knows exactly what’s in there. Now, in fairness, she can’t release the transcript, and she also can’t release a summary of the transcript because it’s derived from what is protected secret grand jury material. But but the point is she knows what’s in there. And let’s assume that the judge even even gives her authorization to release stuff. That doesn’t mean the judge is ordering that every single thing be released. And it doesn’t mean that the judge will monitor what Pam Bondi decides to release. So, if there are some stray bits of evidence that made Donald Trump look bad, that did make their way into the grand jury transcripts, she could just simply withhold that from the public. And that’s the part I want to dig into. Do you think that that Trump Look, I don’t think that Trump is in any way trying to limit his interaction with her to try to give like the optics of some wall between the presidency and the attorney general. I think that ship has long since sailed. But there was a word that I found curious and that was pertinent. And so he wrote that he would release any pertinent information. Well, who’s the arbiter of what is or isn’t per pertinent? Would you presume that Donald Trump is going to be a fair arbiter of what’s pertinent when the whole issue at hand here is that he himself may be the one who is named in these files and so he has a vested interest in making sure not to do anything that would incriminate himself? Yeah. This whole thing is an absurdity. If there’s something in there that makes him look bad, do you really think he in coordination with Pam Bondi would reach the conclusion we think that’s pertinent and we better give it to the public? I mean, all of this, but but Glenn, they said this is the most this is the most transparent administration in history. No. Yeah. No, I I don’t think they understand the definition of the word transparent. So now we had mentioned uh that delay would be a factor here and of course Donald Trump wants to get as much delay as possible because it can allow him and his white house to obuscate the facts and and jin up some new scandals to pin on the left. I know that Fox News and right-wing media is running on some new Obama scandal right now. Uh and of course there’s there’s also autopen. We couldn’t we couldn’t ignore that as the biggest scandal in the history of the presidency. So those two notwithstanding, um, what are we looking at in terms of a delay if if the Trump administration is truly going to stake its, you know, plant its flag in this thing where, look, we we have the ball in motion. We’re waiting for a judge to release the grand jury testimony and we can’t do our hands are tied until that happens. What could we be looking at in terms of the amount of time that that’s going to take? Yeah, Brian. So, let’s talk about the procedure involved because I have filed many motions in my years as a prosecutor asking for a court’s permission to release grand jury materials. When I did it, it was because I was prosecuting somebody in Washington DC and that person was also being criminally investigated in other jurisdictions, maybe across the the district line in Maryland or across the river in Virginia. I would ask the court permission, a court order allowing me to release grand jury materials to other law enforcement agencies and prosecutors so they could use it appropriately in their investigations. And let me just tell you, Brian, every single time I filed such a motion, because what I was talking about was um protected grand jury materials, I filed it under seal so nobody could see it. What did Pam Bondi and Todd Blanch do? Mind you, those are the only two signitories to the motion that was just filed um to the judge in New York seeking the release of these grand jury transcripts. No line attorney, no actual DOJ attorney who would be in court every day actually working cases, signed this. Two political types, both of whom are former Donald Trump personal lawyers. Um so I would file it under seal because nobody is entitled to know about it until the judge rules. Pam and Todd of course filed it publicly just for the PR value of hey everybody look at us we’re trying to get a judge to release some stuff here. So what ordinarily happens is the judge will ask for all of the materials that will be subject to his or her release order if they grant the motion to release all of the materials to be reviewed in camera which means in the judge’s chambers out of the public view. and the judge and the judge’s staff, the clerks, will have to assess whether the judge believes ordering the the disclosure to the public of all of these materials is appropriate, whether it’s going to endanger witnesses, whether it’s going to unfairly, you know, paint people in a in a in a light that they don’t deserve because they were never criminally charged. Boy, that can take a very long time. And meanwhile, I’m sure Pam Bondi and Donald Trump will sit back saying, “Well, we asked the judge and the judge is dragging his or her feet, so there’s nothing we can do about it.” Again, this is a reality show. This is all for PR purposes. None of this has anything to do with actually getting important information into the public square. You know, this all strikes me as an enormous amount of work for what is essentially a performative exercise. I mean, we know that this is complete that Donald Trump is asking for some offering to give something that nobody asked for. Uh, presumably any of his supporters who are acting in good faith because of course there are the Charlie Kirks of the world and the Jack Pacs of the world who just have their lips attached to his ass and whatever he says they’ll just happily regurgitate because their goal is to just genulect at the altar of the god king. But for anybody acting in good faith who may have believed that despite all of his warts, despite all of his issues and and and character flaws, that he would be the person to expose this systemic corruption within the deep state, right? That that there’s a whole echelon of of politicians left, right, and center who feel that they could act with impunity, who who are subject to a different tier of justice than the rest of us. They thought that he would be the person to do that. And not only is he not doing that, but he’s actually entrenching the very system that he promised to fight back against. And so I presume that there are folks on the right who are acting in good faith for whom this is going to be, you know, the the the final straw. And and this just seems like an enormous amount of work for what everybody left, right, and center can see is complete is complete theatrics. This is just a again a performative exercise intended to give him the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability so that he can pretend like he’s doing something by giving everybody again something that nobody asked for. Yeah. The the story is the point. It’s not the substance. It is the story. It is correct the narrative. Exactly like when he asked President Zilinski. He said, “Look, I know you want this money that the US Congress appropriated to you so you can protect the lives of your people against unlawful Russian aggression, but here’s what I need. I need a favor, though. You need to just announce, not conduct, but announce an investigation into my political opponent.” Why? Because it’s the story that matters. It’s not the substance that matters. Right. Perfectly put. Well, we will of course continue to stay on top of everything as we get more news that breaks. For those who are watching, if you want to follow along, especially on the legal front, please make sure to subscribe. The links to both of our channels are right here on this screen. It’s the best way to support our work. It is completely free and it’s a great way to bolster independent media. I’m Brian Teller Cohen and I’m Glenn Kersner. You’re watching the Legal Breakdown. [Music]

Legal Breakdown episode 561: @GlennKirschner2 discusses Pam Bondi deceiving the Republican base over the Epstein files

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