Attorney General Pam Bondi hasn’t appeared on Fox News since backlash to the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files started.
Bondi, once a regular on the cable giant, was last on-air as a guest with Sean Hannity on June 30, just days before the Justice Department and FBI dropped a bombshell memo about the Epstein case that ignited weeks of chaos, Mediaite first noted.
The memo poured cold water on the theory that Epstein had a client list, concluded that he died in a New York jail cell by suicide, and said that no further documents in the case would be released to the public.
It was the beginning of weeks of uproar over the administration’s failure to release the full Epstein files despite making numerous promises to do so, and Bondi was in the middle of the MAGA firestorm.
Fox News has largely followed President Donald Trump’s lead and focused its attention on anything other than the controversy, which has dominated coverage at other outlets.
Bondi has played a central role in the Epstein files saga. She told Fox News that the Epstein files were sitting on her desk back in February, but the comment came back to haunt her after the memo was released on the Fourth of July weekend.
“It’s sitting on my desk right now to review,” Bondi told John Roberts in February, who asked if the Justice Department would release the list of clients. “That’s been a directive by President Trump.”
Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy challenged Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt about Bondi’s comment at a press conference in July, following the DOJ and FBI memo.
“So, what happened to the Epstein client list that the attorney general said she had on her desk?” Doocy asked Leavitt.
“Well, I think if you go back and look at what the attorney general said in that interview, which was on your network, on Fox News—” Leavitt said, before Doocy interrupted her to repeat Bondi’s quote from February.
Leavitt pushed back and said that Bondi was referring to “the entirety of all of the paperwork, all of the paper in relation to Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes.”
Bondi also infuriated MAGA after she invited right-wing influencers to the White House and gave them “Phase 1” binders. The binders contained information already in the public domain.
Some of the headlines Fox has run about Bondi since have been less than favorable.
“Bondi under siege after DOJ reveals no Epstein client list,” a July 7 headline read, which again railed against the comment about the files being on her desk.
The network also covered the reported feud between Bondi and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, headlined: “Inside Dan Bongino’s tense meeting with White House officials over Jeffrey Epstein fallout.”
Despite some noise that he could walk over frustration with the Epstein case, Bongino remained in his role.
Bondi briefly spoke with Fox correspondent David Spunt on July 18 during a tour of Alcatraz Island, but she did not appear as a guest as she has done many times previously.
While Bondi was Florida’s Attorney General, she once guest hostedThe Five and was a regular commentator on the network for years.
