As Trump Looks for Distraction on Epstein, Justice Dept. Rushes to His Aid [View all]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/us/politics/trump-bondi-democrats-justice-department.html

https://archive.ph/VqfXN

As Trump Looks for Distraction on Epstein, Justice Dept. Rushes to His Aid
The department was deployed, in effect, as an arm of the president’s rapid-response operation to help him muscle through a damaging news cycle over Jeffrey Epstein, former and current officials said.
By Glenn Thrush
Nov. 17, 2025, 12:46 p.m. ET

Attorney General Pam Bondi’s prosecutorial sprint speed is improving, at least from the perspective of the man holding a stopwatch, President Trump.

Just 217 minutes elapsed between Mr. Trump’s command on Friday morning that she investigate prominent Democrats like Bill Clinton who were named in documents Congress obtained from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate and Ms. Bondi’s announcement that she had referred the matter to the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. Earlier demands took days, sometimes weeks, to fulfill.

Ms. Bondi’s statement was an unmistakable demonstration of Mr. Trump’s near-total success in subordinating the Justice Department’s post-Watergate independence to his will. Friday was a milestone of sorts. The department was deployed, in effect, as an arm of the president’s rapid-response operation to help him muscle through a damaging news cycle, current and former officials said.

“Whether you are investigated or prosecuted, or whether you are pardoned or have your sentence commuted, depends on whether you are an enemy or a friend of Donald Trump,” said Mary McCord, who once oversaw the Justice Department’s national security division and is now a professor at Georgetown Law.

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We have the worst AG and DOJ in U.S. history