Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie warned that the Department of Justice and FBI were operating outside of the control of the Donald Trump administration. During Trump’s first term in office, the DOJ and the FBI played a crucial role in fabricating the Russiagate conspiracy theory that significantly disrupted his administration.
On Thursday, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the DOJ had released its first tranche of documents that would shed light on the notorious child sex trafficker Jeffery Epstein’s network. Epstein was well connected to the American president, as well as many other businessmen and political leaders.
However, the first release of documents did not reveal new information and they were only given to a select group of journalists and activists. Liz Wheeler, one of the recipients of the documents from Bondi, said the DOJ was undermined.
“Last night a whistleblower contacted Bondi & revealed that the SDNY was hiding potentially thousands of Epstein files, defying Bondi’s order to give them all to her,” she posted on X. “We’re talking recordings, evidence, etc. The juicy stuff. Names. These swamp creatures at SDNY [US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York] deceived Bondi, Kash, and YOU.”
On Friday, Massie explained that the failure to produce meaningful information shows that unelected bureaucrats continue to have significant control over the US government. “The fact that the Epstein files haven’t yet been released demonstrates that the President doesn’t yet have operational control of the DOJ and FBI,” he wrote on X. “It could take a while to establish, or as with his first term, it might never be established.”
During the 2016 campaign, Trump was accused by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the US intelligence community of working with, or acting as the useful idiot of, the Kremlin to rig the election.
After he was elected, former FBI Director Robert Mueller led a special council looking into Trump’s alleged nefarious ties to Russia. Ultimately, the probe was unable to prove any of the myriad claims that Trump was in some way a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
However, the constant hysteria generated by the investigation significantly disrupted Trump’s first administration.
Elon Musk, billionaire and adviser to Trump, said the administration will not succumb to the same forces during his second administration. “I’m sure they will establish control, but to do so they need to bring on new people, exit the bad eggs and promote lower ranking good people to higher ranks,” he posted on X in response to Massie.
