Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have failed to deliver on a key promise they made to Trump voters. We all believed that voting for Donald Trump meant clarity and closure to the infamous Jeffrey Epstein saga. This is a matter of restoring public trust in a system that appears to be overrun with corruption. The public’s perception of the facts in the Epstein case does not line up with the actions of the justice system in response to them. Not without reason, the public believes corruption is to blame and unless or until this perception is resolved, there will be trouble for the administration going forward.

The most likely explanation for what has been described as “a total ***king disaster” by a member of the intelligence community, however, is that Bondi and Patel got swept up into an echo chamber and became convinced they knew things they didn’t know and hadn’t checked. The most logical explanation for the lack of Epstein video evidence is that it never existed in the first place. In other words, Bondi and Patel got “krakened.”

By “krakened” I am referring to the destruction of one-time Trump attorney Sidney Powell after she began repeating too-good-to-be-true stories about the 2020 election. After goosing expectations, Powell then held the press conference that she had previously promised would “release the Kraken.” The term borrows from the movie Clash of the Titans, which features the big sea monster from Greek mythology. Her evidence was supposed to destroy the façade of Biden’s apparent election victory.

Powell released the affidavits. I spent an afternoon puzzling through some of them. It was a maze of small incidents that looked a little irregular but didn’t coalesce into a coherent story. We were supposed to learn that voting machines were hacked by Venezuelan generals. In the space of just a few days, it became apparent that the story we were promised about a devastating mythological sea creature had morphed, instead, to one with things that seemed just “a little fishy.” Beware the Kraken. The Kraken destroyed Powell’s life. It ought to serve as a cautionary tale for the right.

Did Bondi and Patel sell out to shadowy interests that are really in control of the government? Are we living in some kind of “blackmail-ocracy” that builds power through concealing dark secrets? Of course, it was jarring to watch Bondi and Patel conform to the “official” story that Epstein committed suicide. It has always seemed plausible that one of his former clients might have the motive to have him murdered.

Bondi created a visual. She said the Epstein list was “on her desk.” She conjured into our mind’s eye an annotated list of the powerful with detailed descriptions of their crimes. Instead, what we got was just the Justice Department’s conclusion that Epstein did not blackmail his clients and thus did not save compromising photographs. Like everyone else who followed the story, I have mental pictures of DVDs labeled with a date and the last name of a compromised famous person. But these images were conjured by conjecture. No one has ever seen a library of tapes or DVDs. Nor have we confirmed such video ever existed. We’ve assumed the FBI struck gold but hid the evidence from the public.

But do we ever ask how the FBI would have acted if they found nothing with their raids? What if the reason Epstein got such a sweet deal the first time is because he meticulously scrubbed his house of all video evidence?

During the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, the Justice Department introduced a massage table from the search warrant of the Epstein residence. To my knowledge, the government introduced no pictures of famous people having sex with children. There were no videos consistent with what we imagine Epstein kept in his blackmail archives. We all assume that somebody is hiding these videos and photos that we just know were used to blackmail famous people.

But what would it look like if there were no photos or videos in the Epstein compound when the FBI raided it? Aside from our strong suspicions that they must exist, how do we rule that out?

It is important to note that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But the question must be asked: Is it possible that Epstein exploited children for profit without retaining blackmail information on his clients? We’ve heard from his victims that he used cameras to record “private moments” and that Epstein had secret cameras positioned around his New York residence. But that doesn’t mean he actually made recordings of clients. 

We know Epstein cultivated long relationships with powerful people. Wouldn’t Epstein need to soothe his clients’ fears of secret cameras and tabloid cover photos? If patrons of a fitness club discovered cameras in the locker rooms, many would stop going. Some of his clients probably had private security teams that would investigate the possibility that their protectee might be walking into a honeypot. If word got out that even one of his clients was exposed, his entire clientele list and all his schemes would collapse immediately.

We know Epstein sexually exploited children. But do we actually know he recorded famous people doing likewise?

One can imagine Epstein might have had reason to make people think he retained blackmail evidence, just as Saddam Hussein pretended to have chemical weapons—to protect his position and to bluff his enemies. Epstein probably hinted at a secret cache that could only be reached with his cooperation.

During his press conference, Trump was asked about the Epstein files. He responded by mocking people for talking about the case instead of focusing on his accomplishments. But how else would one expect him to react upon discovering that his attorney general and FBI chief made horse’s asses of themselves by promising something they couldn’t deliver?

It’s the explanation that matches observation: The videos never existed in the first place. This explanation also tracks with the level of the caution one might expect of a criminal with a long career like Jeffrey Epstein.

The attorney general and the director of the FBI should not be commenting on evidence they have not personally reviewed. In fairness, I got krakened by the Epstein story, too. But I’m not the attorney general or the head of the FBI. It’s their job to check their own facts before making promises to the American people.