A letter that is allegedly written by US Attorney General Pam Bondi to FBI Director Kash Patel has been doing the rounds of social media. The letter accuses the FBI’s New York office of withholding important documents about Jeffrey Epstein. The letter is dated February 27 and it claims that the FBI has “thousands of documents” but is yet to reveal that they exist. The letter appeared just hours after Bondi said the US Department of Justice will release more files about Epstein on Thursday.
What did Pam Bondi’s letter to Kash Patel say?
The letter alleges that Bondi had received 200 documents related to Epstein which had his flight logs, list of contacts, victims and phone numbers. Bondi says she was repeatedly assured that it was the full set of records. However, she later learned from a source that the “FBI Field Office in New York was in possession of thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and indictment of Epstein.”
Bondi, in the letter said, that by 8:00 a.m. on February 28, she expects the FBI to deliver the full and complete Epstein files to her office, including all records and video recordings, no matter how this information was obtained. “There will be no withholdings or limitations to my or your access,” the letter said.
She also said that the Department of Justice will make sure any public disclosure of these files is done in a way that protects the victims’ privacy and follows the law, just like she has always done in her career as a prosecutor. She further directed an investigation into why her orders were not followed and demanded a report on the findings within 14 days.
Why did FBI allegedly withhold Jeffrey Epstein documents?
Although the accusation comes from Pam Bondi, and the letter that she allegedly wrote, there is no disclosure on if and why FBI withheld these documents. What’s noteworthy here is that the files that were released before included a 2016 interview where an accuser talked about spending several hours with Epstein at Trump’s Atlantic City casino, Associated Press reported.
However, she didn’t say if she met Trump or accuse him of anything wrong. Trump has also said that he once thought Epstein was a “terrific guy,” but they later stopped getting along. In 2023, The Associated Press also got thousands of pages of documents that revealed details about the last days of Epstein’s life at a closed federal jail in Manhattan.