It’s the FBI’s flagship subject workplace, with greater than a thousand brokers and one other thousand or so civilian workers. And proper now, a number of sources with data of the matter say that one precedence on the bureau’s New York subject workplace is taking priority over all others: the assessment and redaction of delicate info within the Jeffrey Epstein case recordsdata, to organize for doable publication.
“It’s actually all arms on deck,” one supply conversant in the matter tells me, including that dozens and dozens of agents are working across the clock on the case, as an alternative of on their common duties. “I even noticed an agent strolling in with a pillow,” the supply added.
The New York subject workplace is an epicenter for FBI counterintelligence, counterterrorism, public corruption, worldwide drug trafficking, and monetary crime investigations. The redeployment of brokers to comb over the file of the notorious sex trafficker Epstein, who died nearly six years ago, is a sign of the Justice Division’s priorities on this second Trump administration. One FBI veteran calls it a “ludicrous” state of affairs.
Through the marketing campaign, Donald Trump stated he’d think about releasing Epstein’s alleged consumer listing, which had lengthy been regarded as a sort of unholy grail naming the highly effective and privileged who had preyed on Epstein’s victims. Lower than three weeks after being sworn in as lawyer basic, Pam Bondi advised Fox Information that listing is “sitting on my desk right now to review. That’s been a directive by President Trump.” However the launch of the “first phase” of the Epstein paperwork, in binders handed out to perplexed MAGA influencers, grew to become an instantaneous fiasco. Nearly all the fabric had been beforehand printed: a “little black guide” that had circulated for a decade in addition to flight logs that surfaced throughout the prosecution of Epstein coconspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. “EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE RIGHT WING PAID INFLUENCERS LIED TO ALL OF YOU TODAY!” posted Trump ally Laura Loomer on X. “THEY ENGAGED IN DECEPTION TO RUN COVER FOR PEDOPHILES!!!”
An apparently irate Bondi later that day wrote to FBI director Kash Patel, alleging that she had been deceived. “I repeatedly questioned whether or not this was the total set of paperwork aware of my request and was repeatedly assured by the FBI that we had obtained the total set of paperwork. Late yesterday, I discovered from a supply that the FBI Subject Workplace in New York was in possession of hundreds of pages of paperwork associated to the investigation and indictment of Epstein,” Bondi stated in her letter. “Regardless of my repeated requests, the FBI by no means disclosed the existence of those recordsdata.” (The Justice Division didn’t instantly reply to a request to remark for this story.)
The lawyer basic, as The New York Occasions famous, supplied no evidence to again up the declare that the New York workplace had failed to show over all recordsdata.
Chatting with Self-importance Honest, an FBI veteran referred to as the frantic scramble “fucked up,” and added that it appeared to fly within the face of how federal circumstances are dealt with within the trendy period. “It’s not 20 years in the past. There’s not one arduous file.”
Days later, James Dennehy, the agent accountable for the New York subject workplace, was ordered to retire, in response to The New York Occasions. The 23-year bureau veteran had already angered the Trump administration together with his assist of bureau leaders who had refused to show over the names of brokers who labored on January 6 investigations. “I’ve been advised many instances in my life, ‘When you end up in a gap, generally it’s finest to give up digging.’ Screw that. I’ll by no means cease defending this joint,” Dennehy wrote in a March 3 email to staff.
That night time, Bondi went on Fox Information claiming she had obtained a “truckload” of proof on the Epstein case, and was now dashing to get it out. The FBI veteran famous that this was an odd manner for Bondi to explain the matter. “There’s no grasp file within the New York workplace. That doesn’t exist,” the veteran added. “There’s not some crusty agent together with his ft on bankers packing containers.”
