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On Thursday, February 27, as Pamela Bondi declassified the Epstein list, critics claimed it revealed "little new information," The Economic Times reported.
In response to the criticism received from the public, Pam Bondi has announced that she has now directed the FBI to deliver "the full and complete Epstein files" to her by 8 AM on Friday (February 28) morning. Bondi has also demanded an investigation into why her orders to the FBI were not followed in the first place.
The news of the Epstein list's release was first announced on the Fox News Live program earlier this week. On the program, Pamela Jo Bondi, the US Attorney General, announced that she was going to release the Epstein files the day after, on February 28.
Commentator Jesse Watters asked Pam Bondi about the delay in the release of the Epstein list, to which she said that there were over 250 victims on the list. The delay was caused in order to ensure that their identities and personal information were protected before the list's release.
For the unversed, the Epstein files are documents that were submitted as part of a lawsuit filed against Ghislaine Maxwell - the former girlfriend of financier and s*x trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein - in 2015. Maxwell was convicted in a Manhattan court in 2021 and has been serving a 20-year prison term since.
The list is expected to contain names of individuals suspected to have been linked to Epstein, flight logs, and other related information.
What was initially expected in the Epstein Files?
Per The Guardian, Virginia Giuffre, one of the financier's victims, filed the lawsuit against Maxwell for helping recruit underage victims for the financier. While Giuffre's lawsuit was settled later outside of court, the documents submitted in court were later accessed by the Miami Herald.
More than 2,000 pages of court documents were unsealed by the court in 2019, and subsequently released in 2020, 2021, and 2022.
Per the Times of India, the Epstein files were likely to reveal the names of influential people linked to the late financier, many of whom had been long speculated. The list was also known to contain legal filings, testimonies, and recordings that detailed the late financier's network and operations. It would have shed light on how Jeffrey conducted his activities and how his crimes were enabled.
These revelations could also have led to new investigations, fresh lawsuits, reputational damage, and more public scrutiny for those whose names came to light.
Jeffrey Epstein was first arrested in 2005 for paying a 14-year-old girl for s*x, but was released after serving 13 months. More than a decade later, in July 2019, the financier was arrested once again on multiple charges. The next month, on August 10, he was found dead in his jail cell, while awaiting trial.
