Days before she announced “thousands of videos” of evidence in the Jeffrey Epstein case, Attorney General Pam Bondi was secretly recorded sharing the information with a woman at a restaurant pretending to be a nanny.
The woman turned out to be wearing a hidden camera for O’Keefe Media Group, the latest venture of MAGA provocateur James O’Keefe.
O’Keefe shared a 15-second clip of the video Thursday showing Bondi eating brunch in a restaurant. A woman who had just approached her asks, “Do you know when the Epstein files are going to get released?”
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“Um, we hope soon,” Bondi answers. “The FBI has been on them.”
“OK, any dates?” the woman presses as Bondi, 59, tries to ignore her and keep eating.
“No, you know what it is, though? There are tens and thousands of videos and it’s all with little kids. So, they have to go through every one [of them],” Bondi says.
The video doesn’t show what happened before or after those few lines of conversation.
O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, has been accused for years of publishing videos that are deceptively edited to misrepresent their subjects. In 2023 he was forced out of the company he founded and sued for allegedly bullying staff and misusing funds. Around the same time, he was also the subject of a criminal investigation.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Department of Justice for comment.
During his segment, O’Keefe said the woman wearing the hidden camera had identified herself as a nanny, though he didn’t say how or why that came up in conversation. Bondi doesn’t have any children.
But on Wednesday, nine days after O’Keefe says the recording was made, Bondi told reporters about the videos for the first time.
“There are tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn,” she said at a press conference. “There are hundreds of victims, and no one victim will ever get released. It’s just the volume, and that’s what they’re going through right now.”
For months Bondi has vowed to release new, bombshell evidence in the case of Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
MAGA insiders have become fixated on the case as an example of a “deep state” cover-up that’s emblematic of widespread corruption, with many arguing the government hid parts of the investigation to protect Epstein’s powerful friends and associates.
Although Trump and Epstein were friends at one time, MAGA lawmakers and influencers have called for intelligence files on the disgraced financier to be declassified. During his Senate confirmation hearing, FBI Director Kash Patel vowed to release the names of people who flew on Epstein’s plane.
But so far, the Trump administration has failed to offer anything revelatory.
Bondi faced a MAGA mutiny in late February and early March after releasing binders full of “new” information that turned out to be mostly documents that were already publicly available. At the time, she blamed the FBI for not being more forthcoming.
In the meantime, O’Keefe has apparently taken matters into his own hands and gone digging for dirt on Epstein’s associates.
On Wednesday, he published a secretly recorded conversation with Prince Andrew’s old friend and advisor John Bryan. The disgraced royal, whose friendship with Epstein famously engulfed the royal in scandal, was “f---ing underage girls” when he and Epstein were close, Bryan told a woman wearing a hidden camera.
A day later, O’Keefe said the interest in the John Bryan story convinced him to also release the footage of Bondi.
O’Keefe claims the attorney general announced the existence of the Epstein evidence tapes after his team reached out to her on May 1 revealing the hidden camera recording and asking why the American people had never been made aware of the videos.
“We would love the opportunity to sit down with the Attorney General to get further clarification” on her comments, O’Keefe Media Group wrote in an email.
In an article on his website, O’Keefe wrote that “no formal response was provided,” without elaborating. Days later, Bondi later used almost the exact same wording during Wednesday’s press conference, the article said.
“Does this show that a government apparatus is still working behind the scenes to protect powerful people involved in the scandal?” O’Keefe said during his segment revealing the secret recording.
The same day, Patel thew cold water one of MAGA’s top Epstein-related conspiracy theories: the question of whether he committed suicide—as reported by the authorities—or was murdered in his cell.
Asked during a Senate committee hearing how he thought Epstein had died, Patel replied, “I believe he hung himself in a cell in the Metropolitan Detention Center.”
If you or a loved one are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing or texting 988.
