Pam Bondi is facing serious political backlash after Congress all but forced the release of the Epstein files. The attorney general finds herself at the center of a fight she once seemed to control. What was supposed to be a straightforward show of loyalty to President Donald Trump has now turned into a moment of vulnerability, especially as parts of the MAGA base begin to turn away over the issue.
The vote itself was overwhelming as the House passed the measure 427–1, and the Senate moved it along almost immediately. Once Trump backed off his resistance and allowed the legislation to move, there was no stopping it. The bill directs Bondi to publish nearly all Justice Department and FBI records tied to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, with only the narrowest room for redactions. For an administration that spent the summer arguing the files couldn’t come out, the pressured shift was dramatic.
The reversal also put Bondi in the hot seat because for months, she was the public face of the decision to keep the files sealed, even though Trump had previously promised to declassify them. When the Justice Department announced that it would not release more information, the reaction was immediate and often furious. Trump supporters who had waited years for the promised transparency felt an unmistakable betrayal.
Bondi didn’t help her own case with a White House meeting in February that has become something of a punchline. She famously handed out binders to pro-Trump personalities, who rushed out telling cameras they had “something.” According to Bakari Sellers, they didn’t “have jack,” and the right-wing pushback rolled in quickly. Sellers said he watched the MAGA base begin to revolt almost in real time, describing how “we’ve seen the risk, we’ve seen the GOP influencers just with the binder on Capitol Hill running out of the White House saying we have something, we have something, we have something, and then they didn’t have jack.”
“Will you release all the files within 30 days?”
BONDI: “We’ll continue to follow the law.”🤔
“You said no addition investigation was warranted. What changed?”
BONDI: “Information.” 🙃 pic.twitter.com/1Dt0DgXcOi
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) November 19, 2025
Sellers added, “I think you saw the pushback from the MAGA base,” and argued that the entire episode exposed something deeper about Trump’s hold on his movement. “It appears the only thing that can separate MAGA from its leader is Jeffrey Epstein, which is kind of interesting on its face,” he said. And in a line that has echoed across social media, he pointed out the hypocrisy: “They spent all these years just with conspiracy theories about Democrats and pizza parlors molesting children that never came to fruition, and now they refuse to actually reckon with the true issue of Jeffrey Epstein. It’s rich.”
Epstein, Sellers argued, may be the one topic capable of driving real daylight between Trump and the movement that has defined his political identity, and the reaction from the base suggests he might be right. For years, many of the loudest voices on the right pushed elaborate conspiracies about Democrats and child abuse. Now that they’re being asked to confront the real conduct of Epstein, the outrage is aimed squarely at Trump and his Justice Department.
Bondi is left in the middle of all of that anger and if the files come out heavily redacted, she will almost certainly be the one blamed for shielding powerful Republicans linked to Epstein. If the documents contain surprises, she may face questions about what her office knew and when. The bill requires her to release not just the case files but internal communications too, which could open the door to oversight inquiries or politically damaging revelations.
